MSNBC chief to leave before Trump White House returns

The head of the left-leaning US news channel MSNBC has resigned, a source at the network told AFP on Tuesday, days before Donald Trump returns to the White House and threatens to silence critical coverage.

Major US media groups view Trump’s return with increasing concern as the Republican has called for networks that broadcast unfavorable material to be taken off the air or have their licenses revoked.

A source briefed on the departure insisted that the departure of Rashida Jones, the first black woman to run a major US cable news operation, was not linked to an expected post-election drop in viewership. And Jones was not pushed, the source added.

“(Jones) has made the decision to step down as president of MSNBC after an extraordinary tenure as head of the network,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, MSNBC’s parent, wrote in a staff memo seen by AFP.

Jones, who has been in the post since February 2021, said in her own memo to her colleagues that she would stay on for the next few months to support her successor Rebecca Kutler, formerly the channel’s chief content strategist.

MSNBC has defined itself in recent years with a highly critical line on Trump, overtaking cable news anchor CNN to become the second-most-watched U.S. channel — but trailing conservative favorite Fox News, a gap that widened in the final weeks of the presidential election in 2024 campaign.

Jones’ exit comes as MSNBC’s parent company Comcast seeks to spin off its cable channels into a company separate from its entertainment division, whose crown jewel is DreamWorks Pictures.

– Media pressure –

In addition to threatening action against the media companies themselves, Trump has said he will go after journalists personally.

He has also suggested that journalists who refuse to give up the sources of stories damaging to the president-elect and his incoming administration could be jailed along with their editors and publishers.

His most aggressive threats could be difficult to pursue given constitutional media protections, but costly lawsuits could prove a drain on some news organizations.

Some companies have already shown themselves to be deferential to the incoming administration.

In mid-December, the ABC News network, owned by the Disney Group, agreed to pay $15 million in damages to settle defamation lawsuits filed by Trump related to its reporting on lawsuits against the president-elect.

Days later, Trump sued a local newspaper, the Des Moines Register, and a pollster who had predicted before the election that he would lose the state of Iowa.

In a surprise move that drew criticism from viewers and pundits, former Republican Joe Scarborough and his wife Mika Brzezinski, hosts of MSNBC’s flagship “Morning Joe” program, visited the president-elect at his luxury Mar-a-Lago residence that day after his winds.

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