White House press secretary Jen Psaki has emerged as a top candidate to potentially replace MSNBC talk show star Rachel Maddow.
SO WHAT
It’s getting harder to tell where the Democratic Party stops and the mainstream media begins.
WHAT HAPPENED
Psaki plans to leave the White House this year, and a number of TV news networks are pursuing her, Puck News reported Wednesday.
- According to Puck, NBC News chairman Cesar Conde and MSNBC president Rashida Jones recently met with Psaki to discuss the possibility of her joining the network, and possibly taking over Maddow’s primetime slot.
- Meanwhile, a source told the New York Post that United Talent Agency co-president Jay Sures, who reportedly represents Psaki, has been shopping “the idea of Psaki as a potential cable news primetime host all over town, drumming up interest.”
- CNN is also hoping to acquire Psaki’s services once she departs the Biden administration, according to Puck.
In August, the Daily Beast reported that Maddow, who hosts the highest-rated program on MSNBC, was preparing to leave her network to pursue other ventures.
ZOOM OUT
While mainstream news outlets have been leaning into partisanship for years, the phenomenon has accelerated since Donald Trump’s presidency.
According to a study by the right-leaning Media Research Center, the media’s coverage of Trump was 150 times more negative than that of President Joe Biden.
- A 2020 Pew Research Center study found that Republicans “have grown increasingly alienated from most of the more established sources, while Democrats’ confidence in them remains stable, and in some cases, has strengthened.”