MSNBC
Joy Reid
Katie Phang
MSNBC announced a major primetime programming shakeup that led to castigation online and on-air. The network, under Rebecca Kutler’s new leadership, canceled programs by star anchor Joy Reid and the Miami-based Katie Phang. The channel will be closing its Florida bureau. Hosts Jonatahn Capehart, José Díaz-Balart and Ayman Mohyeldin also lost shows in the cull.
There’s little doubt that MSNBC needed a revamp; its ratings, like CNN’s, nosedived following President Trump’s November 2024 win. Still, the left-leaning network’s move to cancel shows exclusively led by non-white anchors angered some observers. Rachel Maddow, the anchor solely responsible for having boosted viewership post-inauguration, called out her employer’s callousness during her 9 pm show, while several people on social media cited subservience to the Trump administration, racism, or a combination of the two as reasons for the overhaul.
More changes are sure to come as MSNBC is spun off from Comcast. The biggest question is if any changes can reverse a general hollowing out of TV news audiences for all networks save Fox.
Noosphere
A news app to watch launched late this month, with 12 experienced foreign correspondents providing international coverage on a platform emphasizing video on a TikTok-esque feed, but also providing text and podcast content. CEO Sarah Ferguson, a former PBS war correspondent, says the idea came to her when the extent of broadcast news audience erosion became clear to her while she taught a journalism course at Princeton. Monthly subscription plans now run $15, but will soon increase to $19.99.
The Washington Post
Jeff Bezos
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said in a memo to staff, and a post on X, that the paper’s op-ed section would make a hard turn away from covering a diversity of opinions and toward publishing ideas championing “personal liberties and free markets.”
“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” Bezos wrote, “Today, the internet does that job.”
WaPo opinion editor David Shipley resigned shortly after the announcement. The paper’s losses in 2024 exceeded 2023’s by 30%. Bezos’ move to end the editorial board’s presidential endorsements prompted about 250,000 people to cancel their subscriptions in a matter of days.
Paramount
Skydance
The FTC
Paramount announced that it would end its current diversity, equity and inclusion practices amid a widespread retrenchment in the private sector as the Trump administration pushes back against DEI practices. The company has a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance pending Federal Trade Commission approval.
The company will halt its use of hiring goals based on race, ethnicity, sex, or gender, according to a memo from co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy nd Brian Robbins. Paramount will also cease gathering gender and diversity data from many US job applicants and remove the D.E.I. element from its employee incentive program.
Disney, Meta, Target and Walmart are among the large companies that have made similar recent moves. The corporate pullback from DEI spurred some consumers to call for an “economic blackout” of purchases from large businesses on February 28.
AP
Reuters
Karoline Leavitt
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced a jarring shift in policy that will have the Trump administration deciding which outlets cover the president in “smaller spaces” like the Oval Office and cabinet meetings. The AP and Reuters were among the prominent outlets barred from covering the first meeting of Trump’s second-term cabinet on February 26.
Reuters noted that the White House Correspondents’ Association has previously determined the rotation of the press pool that covered such events. The wire service had participated in that system for several decades. Leavitt clarified that the five big broadcast and cable news networks would hold their spots in the pool–no big surprise from a TV-obsessed White House–while streaming would be added.
Outlets, including Al Jazeera and ABC, that were let into the cabinet meeting reported the scene-stealing presence of Elon Musk, wearing a black baseball cap and “a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘tech support,’” despite lacking the Senate confirmation typically required to join the panel.
