The real reason MSNBC is hiring Ronna McDaniel
A lot of people are feeling shocked and betrayed today because NBC and MSNBC have hired former RNC Chair and election criminal Ronna McDaniel to provide on-air commentary for the 2024 election cycle. But I’m not surprised at all. For as many years as I’ve been providing political analysis, I’ve been stressing two points:
1) All major news outlets, regardless of their political point of view, exist for the sole purpose of generating ratings and revenue. Major news outlets don’t exist to help their side’s political party win elections. It’s not about changing minds or pushing ideology. It’s about ratings.
2) MSNBC is not your ally, and MSNBC hosts are not your friends, just because they happen to cover politics from your side’s point of view. How many dozens if not hundreds of times over the past eight years has MSBNC hyped a scary doomsday narrative just to keep you tuned in, only for that narrative to turn out to have been fictional all along? Like all other major news outlets, MSNBC exists to drive ratings – and you’re the product.
So no, I’m not at all surprised that MSNBC has hired Ronna McDaniel. MSNBC wants to be able to pass itself off as being at least marginally “unbiased.” And while it already has plenty of Republicans and conservatives on the air, they’re all anti-Trump (because any decent and sane human, regardless of ideology, is anti-Trump). By adding Trump’s longtime puppet McDaniel to do occasional commentary, MSNBC can now argue that it’s being fair to all sides. And that boosts ratings among those audience members who happen to be anti-Trump but want to see “both sides” represented.
Of course NBC/MSNBC hiring Ronna McDaniel is a stupid move. She’ll have no insight to offer to viewers. She’ll chase away more viewers than she brings in. And it’ll get particularly ugly once Trump’s criminal trials get underway and everyone is reminded of McDaniel’s role in Trump’s crimes. It’s also still possible that McDaniel will end up criminally indicted herself.
But while the hiring of McDaniel is a stupid idea and will ultimately fail, let’s keep in mind that this kind of thing is par for the course. It’s far from the first time MSNBC has hired a right winger for this sort of reason (remember Greta Van Susteren?), and it won’t be the last.
Let’s also keep in mind that if you want to push back against this sort of thing, it’s not enough to say “I’m going to stop watching these specific MSNBC hosts.” If you’re vowing to only watch MSNBC three hours a day going forward, MSNBC still sees that as a win.
If you want to convince MSNBC to stop these kinds of antics altogether, the only way to get your message across is to (at least temporarily) stop watching MSNBC altogether. MSNBC exists to try to capture your eyeballs for as many hours a day as possible, so it can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. The only way to force MSNBC to change its ways is to use your viewership as leverage.
