MSNBC President Rick Kaplan Fired

Well, the ax fell on Rick Kaplan. It sounds to me like he was fired because of a combination of not producing good programming and not being sufficiently deferential to his corporate boss, Jeff Zucker. Kaplan always hated this site, and felt that we were being unfair to his star.

We started this site because we wanted to see MSNBC's programming improve in quality. That never happened. I hope that MSNBC realizes that we are the audience that's not watching, and that listening to us is the way out of third place.

I doubt it'll happen, but then, a fresh start is a fresh start.

Chris Matthews and Charity

So apparently all the fees that Chris Matthews receives for his speaking engagements are donated to charity, or so says Rick Kaplan. There are any number of problems with this excuse. But I just want to make clear that Kaplan and MSNBC could have short-circuited this by actually answering our questions in the first place. I found the fact that MSNBC won't answer its critics questions rather ironic and disturbing for a news organization, though not surprising. Anyway, here's a good comment from a reader:

Even if Matthews takes no tax deduction for donating the speaking fees to charity, and even if the charities are legitimate and not money laundering operations like some of the Santorum, Delay, and Abramoff charities apparently are, the speaking is inappropriate on three counts.

1)He is speaking to groups that have specific political agendas and accepting financial renumeration from them. Were he speaking to nonpolitical organizations (501c3 status) the situation would be different. But he is cultivating a client base of conservative organizations. His performance on his show will affect their decisions to hire him to speak before their organizations.

2)That he is donating the speaking fees to charity may be noble but its a personal decision and allows him to use more of his other income for other purposes. He could donate equal amounts to charity from his MSNBC salary and use the speaking fees on booze and hookers. The charity would get the same amount of money, Matthews would accrue all the prestige of making large donations to charity, and his lifestyle would remain the same. Even if Matthews donates the fees he very clearly profits from the activity.

3)The final reason is the reason that Kaplan is so touchy about this issue. Matthews is able to use these speaking engagments to court potential sponsors for his and other MSNBC shows. A purported news organization should not be whoring their on-air talent and editorial slant out to potential and exisiting sponsors. Kaplan won't stop this practice for the simple reason that he can't afford to do so. If possible he should be asked about this directly.

I'm not sure I agree with all of these, but they are interesting points nonetheless. One other problem here is that there is actually no proof that Matthews is donating his fees to charity. And who knows which charities he is donating to? Well, Chris Matthews.

I'll be waiting for proof that Kaplan is telling the truth. Something tells me I'm going to be waiting a long time.

Matthews, Kaplan on the Ropes

We released this report last week on Chris Matthews, detailing his outside speaking appearances, including appearances before several lobbying groups.

What we couldn't confirm at the time was the official NBC ethics policy regarding acceptance of outside speaking fees (we asked NBC repeatedly, but got no answer), and whether Matthews actually took money from these lobbying associations.

It is possible, for instance, that Matthews spoke as the keynote speaker at the International Franchise Association's "2004 Franchise Appreciation Day" for free. Maybe their agenda of 'overtime reform' and ending the estate tax, as well as their Political Action Committee's direction of 87% of their donations to Republicans in 2004 made Chris Matthews feel so warm and fuzzy that he did the speech for free. That Matthews is listed on a speakers bureau page as accepting fees is not necessarily proof after all that he takes money from them.

Now, neither NBC nor MSNBC were particularly responsive to our requests for the NBC ethics policy before we published the report. But now we know, because of someone who was able to contact NBC Universal President Rick Kaplan, what we wanted to know in the first place. There is a policy, NBC anchors don't take money, and that we are being unfair to Chris Matthews. From Americablog:

From: Kaplan, Rick (NBC Universal, MSNBC)
To: xxxxx
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: Conflict of Interest:Matthews Big Speaking Engagements at Right Wing Organizations

No NBC anchors take money from any interest group...or any group that I can think of...but these folks don't want to hear that and we choose not to engage them. Chris couldn't be more unfairly treated...

Rick Kaplan
President, MSNBC
xxx-xxx-xxxx
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

This is consistent with what Howard Kurtz wrote in 2002, that "a number of news organizations, including ABC and NBC, banned the practice."

So then, NBC apparently has a policy of not allowing anchors to take money for speaking fees from 'interest groups', as Kaplan puts it. The question becomes, is Matthews violating that rule?

The answer is that if this policy exists, as Kaplan claims it does, then we now know that Matthews is violating it.

Think Progress confirmed with several trade/lobbying groups, including one that paid Chris Matthews $35,000 for one appearance. And these trade groups are interest groups. They lobby and give political contributions.

Rick Kaplan isn't looking too great right now. He's either a liar, he doesn't know his own ethics policy, or he has no idea, nor interest in, what his stars are doing in clear violation of his own network's ban on accepting speaking fees from interest groups.

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Oh yeah, one more thing. Guess who's also listed as being available for speaking fees, potentially also in violation of NBC policy? Tim Russert.

Serious Questions About Matthews' Speaking Fees

"A new report advanced to RAW STORY Thursday suggests that Chris Matthews, the star of the MSNBC's daily talk show Hardball, has accepted hefty speaking fees from an array of conservative trade associations." MORE

The Case Against Chris Matthews

From the Huffington Post: "The case against Chris Matthews is simple: he is not neutral. He channels a right-leaning perspective. This wouldn't be an issue if he and his employers acknowledged it, but a viewer who doesn't have the time or resources to analyze Hardball's content may well assimilate the pro-GOP spin unwittingly."

View Media Matters' new report on Matthews: '"Hardball for the left, softball for the right: Conservatives dominate on Hardball."

Matthews Defends McCarthy

And the cat's out of the bag. Via Attytood:

You know, one-sided, to some extent liberal propaganda. Because you know there Communists – I’m sorry…there were Communists in the government…I could go through the whole list – Elizabeth Bentley, Harry Dexter White, and of course Alger Hiss – there’s a whole gaggle of them.

And the biggest nonsense of this sort of revisionist history is that there wasn’t a Communist threat and that McCarthy was just a drunken fool. Well, he may have been a drunk – he certainly was – and he may have been unable to shoot straight, but there were lots of targets there. He just didn’t hit any.

Wow. Hacktacular.

Matthews Can't Let Go of the 'Bush is Likable' Canard

"Appearing on the March 1 edition of NBC's Today, MSNBC host Chris Matthews falsely suggested that President Bush had personal likeability numbers "going for him" until a recent CBS News poll showed them in decline. In fact, Bush's favorability ratings have been low for some time; they were low when Matthews said in November that "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left." Matthews also said that members of the military are "very loyal" to Bush, despite a recent Zogby International poll showing that most troops disagree with Bush's Iraq policies." Read more from Media Matters