Russell Brand Torches Corporate Media After Calling Out MSNBC on Maher: ‘I Don’t Think Fox News Is the Answer’

Russell Brand followed up his explosive appearance on Bill Maher’s Real Time by once again putting MSNBC in his sights.

On Maher’s show, Brand got into a tense back and forth with MSNBC analyst John Heilemann. While Brand dismissed MSNBC as just as bad as Fox News and other corporate media, Heilemann defended the network and pointed to revelations from the Dominion defamation suit as what sets Fox apart.

After having dismissed MSNBC as “propagandist nut-crackery,” Brand posted a followup video to his YouTube channel, providing more insight into his thoughts on MSNBC and corporate media in general. On Maher’s show, Brand quickly mentioned MSNBC’s media coverage during Covid and Joe Rogan talking about taking ivermectin as examples of an agenda.

In his new video, Brand doubled down on his MSNBC mockery, but dismissed all corporate media, arguing none can say they are above the other because they have all are beholden to corporations affected by their coverage.

“My perspective is all mainstream media outlets are so beholden to corporate and commercial interests that they will not give you the type of information you need to make valuable decisions about the way that systemic power operates. That’s my position, so I don’t think that Fox News is the answer. I don’t think MSNBC news is the answer,” Brand said.

If MSNBC is “better than Fox News,” the comedian argued, it’s not by much.

Brand cited MSNBC being owned by Comcast which is owned by General Electric, which is one of the largest defense contractors around as a tad problematic. He also cited the network’s promotion of the Steele Dossier around the 2016 presidential election as completely biased, especially in light of the report being largely dismissed.

One Washington Post piece shown by Brand accused MSNBC and other media outlets of giving “credibility [to] the dossier without corroboration.”

Brand also pointed to the Donald Trump era ratings boom for networks like MSNBC as an indication that the cable news model is not a news model at all, but rather an entertainment one reliant on advertisers.

“The fact is that they both benefit from figures like Donald Trump who are divisive and incendiary and who draw eyeballs to the screen to their channels for whom? Their advertisers … that’s the way the business model works,” Brand said.

Brand ended his video by calling for a more transparent media and accusing current network anchors of using “condescension” to talk to their viewers.

“This is what I believe is possible for the media,” Brand said. “You can have transparency, accountability, authenticity, integrity, an open conversation with viewers that’s not based on piety, pomposity, judgement, and condescension — we are together looking for better ways to organize society, create better systems, hold the powerful to account, and create systems where they aren’t so powerful, and address many of the issues in American contemporary life that are causing the vision and conflict.”

Watch Brand’s full response to his Maher appearance here.

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