MSNBC Primary Coverage
So tonight, MSNBC covered the primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island, just as all the major news networks did. I do have to say, it was likely the least professional effort I’ve seen out of MSNBC yet, mainly because of the behavior of Chris Matthews.
Over time I have come to ignore Chris Matthews because his “banter” has become less and less insightful. But the main reason I list him in this critical post of MSNBC’s professionalism has nothing to do with the actual words he spoke. It has everything to do with his demonstrated inadequacies as a broadcast professional.
At least a dozen times tonight, Chris Matthews coughed loudly while his microphone was live. I’m not talking in the middle of a sentence, which would be excusable. I’m talking about his disgusting, slovenly hacking while his co-presenter, Keith Olbermann, was talking.
What, is MSNBC such a low budget operation that they cannot afford a cough button? Is their budget so small that some lowly engineer couldn’t rig up a momentary switch, a resistor, a capacitor, and a couple of XLR jacks in a cheap enclosure to allow Chris Matthews to mute his own mic while coughing?
Or is Chris Matthews so unprofessional or so stubborn that he refuses to observe common courtesy by not coughing while on air?
I mean, come on. My online radio show has a budget of under $200 a year. Yes– a year. Do we subject our audience to non-stop coughing and hacking? No. Of course not. That would be rude, inconsiderate, and disgusting. We have come up with ways to keep bodily noises off the air. Anything less is simply unprofessional.
But for MSNBC– constantly at the bottom of the ratings as far as I am aware– it is OK for Chris Matthews to act like a Neanderthal?
What’s next? Will Chris Matthews let out a big Barney-from-The-Simpsons style belch on air?
Will someone from MSNBC please– for the sanity of their audience– teach Chris Matthews some manners and tell him to stop coughing into his microphone?!
Or at the very least, get him a glass of water.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Heh - I wish that was the worst that could be said of MSNBC’s coverage. Frankly, I prefer Matthews coughing to Olberman speaking.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Heh. Yeah, Olbermann drives me nuts too. My biggest pet peeve about him is this:
All of the candidates involved in the primaries give a speech after the results have begun to flow in and the projections have been made. Olbermann, or whoever is in charge of him while he’s on the air, feels that it is necessary to talk literally up to the very moment that the candidate starts speaking. In almost every instance, Olbermann talks over the beginning of the speech. And also in almost every instance, the speech is cut off at the end so that the talking heads can get started on their ever-so-insightful and equally witty commentary on the content of the speech.
Can we please just play the whole speech from start to finish?
MSNBC drives me nuts, but what are the other options? Fox is clearly out of the question. Whenever I flip over to their primary coverage, my first thought is always, “holy crap, I don’t think it’s possible to make the colors of the graphics any more saturated than they already are.” My second thought is always, “who the hell are these people?” For reportedly being the number one news network, Fox just seems like an amateur attempt with unknown talent.
CNN is also out of the question. Wolf Blitzer just drives me crazy. I haven’t watched CNN since Super Duper Pooper Scooper Tuesday, when Wolf Blitzer was standing in front of a map of the US that was color-coded for each of the candidates. He kept trying to describe which color represented which candidate, and did a miserable job. Here we see John McCain, represented by this hot pink, almost fuschia type color. Mike Huckabee is represented by this medium orchid color, kind of pale violet red. Mitt Romney is in plum, or thislte if you will. And Rudy Giuliani’s states are colored dark red, or maroon, or you might even call it crimson. I had no idea what he was talking about.
If this is the best of what cable news has to offer, well… it’s no surprise that most people are so turned off by politics.