The Upshot’s Michael Calderone writes about criticism being aimed at MSNBC’s Election Night lineup…
The question of having MSNBC’s partisan hosts anchor news coverage became an issue during the 2008 political conventions after some of its top on-air personalities clashed with one another. A couple weeks later, NBC’s David Gregory was tapped to anchor MSNBC’s coverage of major political news events. But as the 2008 election rolled around, the network came up with a new solution: Gregory would “anchor” while Matthews and Olbermann would “host” the coverage.
Two years later, there wasn’t any outcry when MSNBC chose to go with Olbermann, Matthews and the rest. Although MSNBC has Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, on air for three hours each morning, the network has solidified its reputation as the cable network for liberal commentary since the 2008 election. Rachel Maddow, who was then a new host, has become more established, and MSNBC gave shows to Schultz and O’Donnell.
Now the network doesn’t see a need to sideline its biggest stars for the year’s most-watched political event.
“We made the decision to give the viewers what they come to MSNBC night in and night out for — Keith, Chris, Rachel, Ed, Lawrence and Gene, who’s joined us for election nights for the past several years,” an MSNBC spokesman told The Upshot.
Fox News, rather than having top-rated hosts like Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck anchor election coverage, went instead with Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly. But the network still gave ample airtime to its stable of conservative commentators, including Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.
