Phil Griffin Interview

GQ’s Marin Cogan interviews Phil Griffin…

GQ: Your network was beaten by Fox at the RNC but beat them at the DNC. Is MSNBC the liberal counterpart to Fox?

Griffin: Despite a major piece in The New York Times, which I thought was out-rage-eous—I don’t think the writer watched our coverage—I was really pleased with our coverage here. And see everybody tries to make an equivalence between us and Fox. You tell me when Fox praises the Democrats! Lawrence O’Donnell said it was one of the best speeches he heard by Romney. Ed Schultz talked about how a star was born with Ryan—even though he disagreed with everything he said. Steve Schmidt the former McCain manager in the ’08 election talked about strategy and helped us understand what they’re doing. We’re totally open to—we don’t have to agree with it but we totally understood it and tried to dissect it and appreciate it for what it is. You never see that at Fox—there’s no equivalency! And by the way: Every. Republican. Candidate, politician who’s in trouble or needs help or tension, where do they go? They go to Fox and they get their one-on-one interview. President Barack Obama has never done an interview on MSNBC. He’s done one on CNN on Fox and the other networks. He’s never done MSNBC. The Dems don’t come to MSNBC because they know we don’t lay down, we’re not their voice, we’re independent. There are a lot of things we agree about, but we’re not—we live by facts we go deep and don’t let people get away with just making statements and we’re not going to shill for them. And that is why I can’t stand it when people are making the equivalency.