Fox's Howard Kurtz was very upset with MSNBC and Rachel Maddow for cutting away from Trump on Super Tuesday, and completely misrepresented what happened before they did it.
March 11, 2024

Fox's Howard Kurtz was very upset with MSNBC and Rachel Maddow for cutting away from Trump on Super Tuesday, and completely misrepresented what happened before they did it.

Kurtz opened his show this Sunday by accusing Maddow of being so "annoyed by Trump's victory speech that she cut away," before showing a clip of Trump saying "I read an article yesterday where it said this is one of the finest run campaigns that anybody has ever seen" during the speech before MSNBC quit airing the speech.

Kurtz definitely wanted to leave his audience with the impression that they cut away as soon as it started, telling viewers that Trump was "citing an NBC News article," as though that's the only thing he said prior to them pulling the plug.

Later in the segment after also attacking MSNBC for mocking Republicans for stoking racism and fearmongering over the southern border, and discussing Trump's indictments in purely political terms with no regard whatsoever for what's he's been accused of, Kurtz said this to his guest Leslie Marshall when they returned to the topic of MSNBC's coverage:

KURTZ: Leslie, let me expand on your point about, any news organization has to know its audience and so forth. And I get that, and of course I get the distinction between straight journalists and commentators, left, right, center or somewhere in between.

But why can't outlets like MSNBC, they always seem to be agonizing over this, just run his speech. I mean, after all, he just won 12 states, and then spend the next 23 and a half hours attacking him? I have no problem with the attack, but it's like they make such a self-righteous point about we're cutting away, we can't possibly pollute our airwaves.

What Kurtz didn't tell his audience is that they actually allowed Trump to ramble on and lie for about 7 and a half minutes before they finally had enough of it, and did exactly what he said there, and started fact checking him.

I'm not sure how much longer he thought they should let him go on spreading bullshit on their network before the finally cut him off, but it's pretty rich that he's criticizing them when Fox quit airing Trump's rallies a while ago, probably because they're worried about more lawsuits for airing Trump's lies.

Leslie Marshall did actually mention something about the fact that a most media outlets are no longer airing Trump's rallies later in the segment, but of course Kurtz just chalked that up to ratings, rather than any real concern over being sued.

Here's the MSNBC Super Tuesday coverage where you can see for yourself just how many lies they let him tell first before they finally cut away and had enough of him. The fact checking continued long after the clip below ended.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon