Melissa Harris-Perry frozen out of MSNBC. Leaves, says her show has been 'Silenced'

Throttled!! Melissa Harris-Perry says her show has been 'silenced' by MSNBC

Host walks off long-running show after growing frustration over losing editorial control and pre-emptions for election coverage

Was wondering what happened to that show ... anything to do with  up-coming elections?

'Eerily similar to same throttling of Steve Kornacki's "UP with Steve Kornacki" and Al Sharpton's show daily show.
Seems most anchors with great introspect, who think outside the box, run risk of likely being affected.'
    

‘I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,’ Harris-Perry wrote in a email to the show’s staff. ‘I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.’ Photograph: Screengrab

Television host Melissa Harris-Perry walked off her long running MSNBC morning show Friday, saying that her show was “taken” and “utterly silenced” by network executives.

“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” Harris-Perry wrote. “I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.”
The announcement was made in an email to the show’s staff that was made public on Medium and in the New York Times. The host, who is also a professor of political science at Wake Forest University, expressed frustration that her program had been regularly pre-empted for election coverage, and that her editorial discretion had been increasingly pared back by the network.
“Now MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant,” Harris-Perry wrote, “without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.”

The letter was published on a weekend when the host was scheduled to help the network cover South Carolina’s Democratic primary, and only a few days after she had a weekend off. Harris-Perry wrote that she believed this scheduling decision was “made solely to save face, because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage”.

Jamil Smith, who co-founded the morning show with Harris-Perry in 2012, and is now a senior national correspondent for MTV News, offered the host his full support in a Twitter post. Many of the show’s fans also chimed in on social media, saying that they would not watch the network without Harris-Perry.

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 26, 2016

As someone who was with @MHPshow from the very beginning, I stand with @MHarrisPerry on this. 100 percent. https://t.co/WasTI8VL8j #nerdland

Harris-Perry’s show, often referred to by its self-styled nickname “Nerdland”, is seen by many of its viewers as an oasis – a program that values feminist analysis, diverse backgrounds and inclusivity – in a media landscape dominated by straight white men.
MSNBC, which began broadcasting in 1996 as a collaboration between Microsoft and NBC, has struggled to maintain ratings in recent years, and its leaders have steadily tried to shuffle staff and re-adjust programs. In 2013, network executives began shifting away from the channel’s liberal commentary to a more centrist news-oriented lineup in response to conservative broadcast outlets such as Fox News.
MSNBC’s previous news model grew out of the network’s success with Keith Olbermann’s Countdown program, during George W Bush’s presidency. Yet it has returned to the more centrist, news-oriented lineup, headlined by the return of Brian Williams, NBC’s recently disgraced nightly news anchor, to cover breaking news.

— truthofthesoul (@truthofthesoul) February 27, 2016

I stand with @MHarrisPerry!!! #nerdlandforever love @JoyAnnReid but have to boycott #MSNBC until @MHPshow is back!!! https://t.co/IvvsdRydGv

Harris-Perry’s letter did not rule out a possible reconciliation and return to the program, but suggested it would only be on her own terms.

Courtesy theguardian