Ex-MSNBC producer pens back-to-back posts saying MSNBC and Fox News let ratings stoke ‘division’
Former MSNBC producer Ariana Pekary has issued blistering back-to-back statements criticizing both her ex-network and Fox News for letting ratings control coverage.
In her first post that went viral Monday, Pekary said she felt compelled to quit her job as a producer on MSNBC’s second-most-watched program, “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” because the network’s “ratings scheme” forces “skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis.”
Her last day was July 24.
“It’s possible that I’m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would ‘rate,’” she wrote.
Pekary didn’t mention Fox News by name in her original post but said “everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing.”
“This cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others… all because it pumps up the ratings,” she wrote.
On Tuesday, she issued a follow-up statement specifically calling out Fox News.
She said Fox’s coverage of her resignation “couldn’t help but to turn my statement into a divisive piece of clickbait.” She said it proved her point that each network has a “funding model” that pumps up polarization.
“As it turns out, Fox News inadvertently proved me right,” she wrote Tuesday. “The headline skewed the intention of my piece and they removed almost all of the context in which I explain the systemic nature of the problem. That is unfortunate, but not surprising.”
She said in her Monday post that the “cancer” of the ratings-driven networks is a threat to democracy.
“Any discussion about the election usually focuses on Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, a repeat offense from 2016,” she wrote.
“Trump smothers out all other coverage,” she said. “Also important is to ensure citizens can vote by mail this year, but I’ve watched that topic get ignored or ‘killed’ numerous times.”
———
©2020 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
