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Thursday, July 21, 2011

MSNBC parts ways with Young Turk Cenk Uygur

I like the fight and verbal come backs from Rev. Al Sharpton, but Cenk (jenk) Uygur took on the Washington establishment, Republicans and Democrats. That didn't sit well with establishment media:



Salon's Glenn Greenwald:

Uygur explained that, several months ago, he was summoned to a meeting with MSNBC boss Phil Griffin and told that while it is fun and enjoyable to be an "outsider," that is not what MSNBC is for.  Instead, Griffin told him, MSNBC is "part of the establishment," and Uygur must conduct himself in accordance with that reality.  It's perfectly fine in establishment discourse to express contempt for one of the two political parties.  It's equally fine to periodically criticize your own.  But what is most assuredly not fine -- particularly in a high-profile nighttime spot and without having a real power base that comes from mammoth ratings -- is to be aggressively adversarial to the political establishment itself and the financial interests that fund, own and control that political system.  That is what Uygur was, and while there's no evidence that this was the primary cause of his removal, it was clearly a serious source of dissatisfaction with the station's executives, including MSNBC's chief.

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