Since I suggested MSNBC could possibly have created a mistake in employing him, I was prepared for newly hired anchor Al Sharpton to create it on whenever we finally brought up his latest gig.
But Sharpton, whose public career has lurched from pressing the later-debunked rape claims of Tawana Brawley to running for president, shrugged off any criticism with a casual confidence.
"I didn't think it was that great a leap," he said Thursday, noting he's got hosted a radio show, Keeping It Real with Al Sharpton, for more than five years. "(Radio personalities-turned-MSNBC hosts) Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz do some tips i do … a form of journalism according to opinion and advocacy."
At 6 p.m. today, MSNBC's viewers will decide on their own just what Sharpton does, as his new show PoliticsNation debuts on MSNBC. The man himself was uncharacteristically taciturn about what's coming, noting realistically work as guest host in the last eight weeks was essentially spent helming a version of Schultz's show.
I wondered: Would Sharpton's continuing are an activist jibe with the NBC News standards all anchors is obliged to follow? And given that nobody of color yet hosts a show over a major cable news channel in prime time - they actually can be found in midday newscasts - should MSNBC start down the road to diversity with someone known mostly just as one activist? (6 p.m. technically isn't prime time, which starts at 8 p.m.)
"I think people must go through the format and realize that after 5 p.m., the format doesn't require a journalist," Sharpton said, noting that hosts Maddow, Schultz and Lawrence O'Donnell never have worked primarily as journalists. Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's 7 p.m. show Hardball, worked for Fifteen years being a journalist, serving as Washington bureau chief for the Bay area Examiner.
Indeed, Sharpton sees his hire as breaking another color line: allowing a radio host of color to produce the same transition to cable news that others have.
"Those of us who've been in advocacy along with radio have seen they may be taking people from radio. Why can't they take us?" he was quoted saying. "Why did this (controversy) start with me?"
Well, Schultz and Maddow never led a nationally known civil rights advocacy organization before you take their hosting jobs at MSNBC, let alone continuing to steer that group while working their anchor job.
Sharpton countered by noting his National Action Network is a federally recognized charity prohibited from advocacy for specific politicians, by scoffing at queries about whether his hire was payback for supporting giant Comcast's takeover of NBC Universal.
He did admit that discussions about his advocacy work contributed to a delay that kept MSNBC from confirming him because the 6 p.m. host until 8 weeks after he began guest-hosting within the time slot. And, awkward because he looks reading coming from a TelePrompTer, Sharpton insists his stiffness on camera may be exaggerated by critics.
I say Sharpton's hire may be the latest inside a long-developing trend of putting cable news hosts in prime time mostly determined by astounding to acquire viewers.
CNN's hire recently of former Nyc Gov. Eliot Spitzer proved it; perhaps the most traditional cable news channel was happy to hand considered one of its top jobs to someone with no TV journalism experience, further separating the marquee jobs from journalism standards of fairness and accuracy.
"What you are unable to say is the fact that this trend started with me," Sharpton said. "We shouldn't declare that one shouldn't a single thing until the whites of the color lines are broken. All this must be broken."
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