The news that cable giant Comcast would swallow up Time Warner Cable, its largest competitor, was big news almost everywhere. But not on Comcast-owned MSNBC.
According to a search of the Nexis news database–which captures much, but not all, of the channel’s programming–the big news was only mentioned once in passing, a February 13 CNBC Market Wrap newsbreak on the Ed Show.
But it wasn’t completely ignored. The February 13 broadcast of Morning Joe featured both sides–meaning the CEO of Comcast and the CEO of Time Warner Cable.
The news segment was more PR than journalism, with hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough offering up softballs. Scarborough actually prefaced one question by saying, “It’ll sound like a softball question”; his question to Comcast‘s Brian Roberts was, ‘”Comcast seems to be doing everything right over the past four or five years.” Brzezinski closed the segment by congratulating the CEOs.
The merger also came up during a brief chat with Scarborough and business pundit Donny Deutsch. “We know Brian,” Scarborough explained.”We get our paychecks from Comcast. Obviously we’re not sort of cool and detached from this news.”
He added:
Even if I weren’t working here…I would be saying, “It’s a pretty stunning story about how successful Comcast is right now.”
Deutsch concurred: “Everything they’ve done is right.”
It’s hard to know what’s worse: Ignoring this rather major news story, or treating it as an occasion to flatter your boss.
Interestingly, CNN covered the merger news pretty widely. (CNN used to be part of the same conglomerate as Time Warner Cable, before Time Warner spun off its cable operations into a separate company.) CNN‘s media show Reliable Sources (2/16/14) featured Free Press CEO Craig Aaron, an outspoken critic of the proposed merger. CNN host Brian Stelter added: “Now, Comcast, we asked them to come on this week–they declined.”
Make sense–when they could choose to appear on a much friendlier cable channel.
Eh. MSNBC has steadily been turning right for a few years now, and we’ve noticed that there are some critical issues (such as poverty-related policies) that are simply no longer covered.
Once upon a time the phone company was the one and only one, until they were too big and were crushing any possibility of new competition. The government rightfully carved them up.
I think the same action will have to be done with Comcast/Time; that coupling together would just be another “vampire face sucking squid” ( thank you Matt Tiabbi.)
For all those people who say they are “free market” apostles……………this joining together will smite any competition, and that’s a BAD thing.
However, if it does go through, maybe there will be an Olympic type event of the battling CEOs…….2 of them now and only 1 future company. : 0
Gloriana you know i am a huge proponent of free market competition.So this has a huge “ick” factor for me.BUT……I cant imagine of any move by government to intrude on market forces that would have less of that factor.What would you propose?