MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow lashed out at her own network for its decision to cancel the shows of two of its non-white primetime hosts, including the anchor Joy Reid.
Reid’s final broadcast of The ReidOut occurred earlier in the night, and Alex Wagner will not be returning to host Tuesdays through Fridays in the 9 p.m. hour after Maddow finishes her nightly stint during Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. President Joe Biden’s former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, will take over that slot instead.
The cancellation of The ReidOut “is very, very, very hard to take,” began Maddow, who earlier joined Reid’s show for an emotional goodbye.
“I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12, and I have had so many different kinds of jobs you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Maddow said. “But in all of the jobs I have had in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid.”
“I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her,” Maddow continued.
“I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door,” she went on. “It is not my call, and I understand that. But that’s what I think.”
Reid is now eyeing a new “venture” on Substack, according to New York Times media reporter Benjamin Mullin. In signing off Monday, Reid didn’t announce anything definitively, but did emphasize her profile on that platform.
Maddow, no stranger to publicly calling out her network, then commented critically on some of MSNBC’s other moves.
“I will tell you it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two—count them, two— non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend,” Maddow said. “And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.”
The anchor then stressed to viewers that no matter who fills the shoes of those whose shows were cancelled, “You are not going to be disappointed in who’s on our air and what you’re going to be seeing.”
She then made a point to note everyone behind the scenes is “being put through the ringer.”
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off. They’re being invited to reapply for new jobs,” Maddow said.
“That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programing changes, presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people and it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary, and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work, and so we don’t generally do things that way.”
What makes things especially difficult and stressful, Maddow went on, is that this is occurring when freedom of the press is under attack. “It’s very visceral for us here,” she said.
Maddow concluded on an optimistic note.
“We welcome new voices to this place and some familiar voices to new hours. It’s going to be great, honestly. And we want to grow and succeed and reach more people than ever and be resilient and stay here forever,” she said.
“I also believe, and I bet you believe, that the way to get there is by treating people well, finding good people, good colleagues, doing good work with them, and then having their back—that, we can do a lot better on. A lot better.”
In the next hour, Maddow spoke briefly with Lawrence O’Donnell, who seconded “everything” she had said about Reid. And of everyone on Reid’s show, he added, “The idea that those people are all now adrift somehow makes absolutely no sense, as you pointed out earlier, and I hope something can be done about that.”
