Professor Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC host and noted Unitarian Universalist (she wrote the foreword to the newest edition of the UU Pocket Guide), has walked off her show after being preempted again and again in favor on endless election coverage.
She said she had not appeared on the network at all “for weeks” and that she was mostly sidelined during recent election coverage in South Carolina and New Hampshire. (She was asked to return this weekend.)
In her email, Ms. Harris-Perry wrote that she was not sure if the NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, or Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, were involved in the way her show was handled recently, but she directed blame toward both.
“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.”
Prof. Harris-Perry is one of the few black women with a major position in TV news. Often the “election coverage” that pre-empts her show is just showing stump speeches live and other things that could be ignored or condensed.
I stand in solidarity with lack of respect for her show and the work she does. Her show has by far the most people of color as guests.
News shouldn’t just show candidates yelling at each other. it needs to explore how their policies and ideologies will affect communities of regular people. Only through diversity can that be analyzed.
From @existentialfish (link)
Unspoken Politics 