As a network, MSNBC is in serious trouble. After years of being America’s number one left-wing propaganda outfit, it seems the public has caught on and had enough. It is not merely a matter of a modest drop in ratings. The network’s ratings have cratered to a historic low.
I have often written that left-wing media is never popular with the majority of the center-right American public. It is the reason both CNN and MSNBC are being crushed by FOX. The entire lineup of MSNBC personalities are not favorites with the public.
Many of the MSNBC personalities have their own reasons for lacking shelf appeal. Al Sharpton is among them. He presents himself as a Baptist pastor and civil rights activist, and is commonly referred to by colleagues on MSNBC as “The Rev.”
He appears regularly on “Morning Joe” – a show that is having its own problems. Sharpton also has his own program, “Politics Nation,” on the left-wing network.
Sharpton has long teetered on the ethical fulcrum between journalism and political activism – using both to amass a fortune. Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King, who kept his partisan political views (mostly Republican) in the background, Sharpton is highly political – including a run for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2004.
Perhaps Sharpton’s greatest success, however, has been making money. He has made a lot of it from the various facets of his life – media, civil rights and politics. His reported net worth is in excess of $10 million. He gets a seven-figure salary from MSNBC in addition to his $650,000 annual paycheck from his National Action Network (NAN) organization. NAN also provided Sharpton with more than $900,000 in private plane and limousine services in the past year.
Perhaps that is why some of his flock is turning on him. The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) — which represents more than 27 million parishioners in more than 150,000 Black churches across the nation — has called Sharpton out specifically for the two $250,000 payments he received from the Harris campaign. (Add that to the Millions of dollars Harris paid to Oprah Winfrey and other celebrity endorsers, and you know why the Harris campaign wound up in debt after raising a record billion dollars.)
The NBCI said the payments to Sharpton have put “a moral stain on the integrity of the Black Church.” The organization’s president, Reverand Anthony Evans, told the Washington Free Beacon that Sharpton is loved and admired by many in the group’s coalition but that does not take away from concern over “significant moral and journalism ethics.” Evans called the Harris payments “a bridge too far.”
Evans said that “Rev Sharpton is a minister of the Gospel. This payment does not look good for a man supposed to represent integrity.”
The two $250,000 payments to Sharpton were made on September 5 and October 1 – prior to his two high visibility interviews with Harris on October 3 and October 20. This is more than a coincidence or the mere appearance of impropriety.
Sharpton has had a history of financial scandals. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to not filing tax returns in a plea deal to have felony charges dropped. In 2008, it was reported that he owed $1.5 million in back taxes. In 2014, the New York Times reported that the dapper Sharpton and his for-profit enterprises had more than $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens.
Writing for the Miami Herald in 2007, Black journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr. penned an article headlined, “Beg pardon, but who died and made Al Sharpton president of the Negroes?” Pitts addressed Sharpton’s popularity among the White liberal Democrat establishment when he wrote:
“So, it’s about time news media – and those who will insult us in the future – get past this notion that one or two people are anointed to speak for 36 million. That is a simplistic, antiquated, and faintly condescending idea.”
Having followed Sharpton’s career for decades, I have always considered him a race-baiter and a grifter. I see him as the type of person Booker T. Washington described when he wrote:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Evans called on MSNBC to launch an investigation into Sharpton’s activities – and to suspend his show until such an investigation is completed. I think someone should investigate Sharpton, but MSNBC should start addressing its own ratings problem by terminating Sharpton’s various roles with the network immediately. It would be a good start.
So, there ‘tis