The liberal media is in trouble.
No where is that more true than at MSNBC.
And MSNBC is facing the one court case that could destroy them.
In the months following the 2024 election, MSNBC’s primetime ratings sunk by 30 percent.
Viewers were appalled to learn that MSNBC on-air talent misled them about the state of the race by painting a rosier picture of Kamala Harris’ chances than actually existed.
But low ratings were only one of MSNBC’s problems.
NBC’s parent company, Comcast, spun off MSNBC and other cable channels and streaming service Peacock from NBC Universal.
MSNBC now has no affiliation with NBC News.
This was done, in part, to remove the stigma of MSNBC’s strident Trump hate from the more profitable NBC News franchise.
And MSNBC may have to change its name now.
Spinning off companies is usually a precursor to a potential sale.
Another telltale sign a sale is on the way is when companies clean up the books to make the purchase of the company look as financially attractive as possible.
MSNBC cleaned up their books by settling a $30 million defamation lawsuit with Georgia gynecologist Dr. Mahendra Amin after host Rachel Maddow smeared him as a “uterus collector” and falsely accused him of performing mass hysterectomies on illegal aliens who were being held at a Georgia ICE detention center in 2020.
“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” Maddow said during the on-air segment in 2020.
The story all hinged on claims – which were later admitted to be fabrications – from a nurse named Dawn Wooten.
‘The nurse says she and her fellow nurses, quote, questioned among ourselves like, “Goodness – he’s taking everybody’s stuff out. That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector.’ Maddow added.
‘”He’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taking their tubes out.”
‘What in the world?’ Maddow exclaimed. “They’re stuttering! They’re all screwed up — they’re all mentally screwed up!”’
But internal documents later showed that MSNBC executives, reporters, and even Maddow, had their doubts about Wooten’s claims.
And it turned out Wooten made the claims up after protesting at the ICE detention center because she learned she would no longer have a full-time position there.
Court filings showed NBC Universal’s Deputy Director of Standards, Chris Scholl, also expressed skepticism about the story.
“We just don’t know if any of this is true,” Scholl stated, adding that he “had no idea whether Wooten’s claims were accurate, and whether or not Amin was a ‘a good doctor or a shitty doctor.’”
Filings also showed that fellow MSNBC host Chris Hayes said he and Maddow “initially questioned reporting on the allegations” and suggested there was a lot of “jumping to conclusions around the complaint.”
And MSNBC reporter Julia Ainsley communicated her unease about Wooten’s claims as well.
“In internal correspondence revealed during discovery, she too expressed doubt about the story’s truth- after Soboroff wrote to her in a text that an immigration attorney he spoke with offered ‘mixed feelings’ about Wooten,” the Daily Mail reported.
It was in MSNBC’s favor to pay out and keep from losing big at trial.
But also, a trial and the ensuing appeal is a lengthy process.
So the last thing a company wants while preparing to sell is the uncertainty of major litigation hanging over its head.
The trail of breadcrumbs all lead to the likelihood that MSNBC will be up for sale.
And if the channel is sold, there’s no guarantee the new owners will want to keep it in its current form – or even on the air at all – given its tanking viewership and the declining cable TV business.