The Hammer That Is Politico Looks At MSNBC, Only Sees Nails

While it's a well-worn and often over-used axiom, the phrase "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail," can be applied to entirely too many of the think pieces that come out of the Washington Beltway and the professional political commentariot. No matter what the story, no matter how unlikely the connection, the default journalistic response is to frame the issue as one that is primarily influenced by politics.

Wednesday's poster child for this knee-jerk editorial take is a Jason Schwartz piece in Politico entitled "MSNBC's surging ratings fuel Democratic optimism." The all-too-predictable premise is that MSNBC's rising ratings must be good news for Democrats this fall, since MSNBC is perceived as a liberal network and...blah...blah...blah..

Stevens agreed with Jamieson that it’s common for the out-of-power party to experience an enthusiasm boost, while the in-power party suffers. And the first quarter of 2017, when Trump took office, was certainly a high-water mark for interest in the administration. And all of the networks, relatively speaking, are doing well. Although CNN lost 13 percent of its viewers from the previous year, its first quarter was still its second best in the past nine years.

But the contrast between Fox News dropping 16 percent and MSNBC gaining 30 percent is notable.

“I think there are a lot of people out there who are dramatically troubled by the direction of the country, and they would like to be reminded that a) they’re not alone, and, b) there is an alternative,” said Stevens, an outspoken Trump critic. “I basically consider MSNBC the ‘It doesn’t have to be this way’ channel."

While a renewed enthusiasm by Democrats may have some effect on MSNBC's ratings, the piece does note that Fox News still has four of the top five most-watched shows in cable news, according to Nielsen. And if the MSNBC rating rise was strictly driven by Democratic enthusiasm, wouldn't much of the network's lineup be winning their respective timeslots?

The Politico piece's "everything is a nail" answer overlooks the obvious answer. The ratings success of Rachel Maddow (and to a lesser extent, Lawrence O'Donnell) is a direct reflection of the type of show she is doing. It's not so much that her editorial stance matches her audience. It's that in a year of increasing chaos and endless news cycles, Maddow's show seeks to bring context to complicated stories. She provides answers and at a time when few are to be found in national politics, that's an attractive approach for viewers.

Maddow's show is everything that most of cable news has worked hard to get away from in recent years. She doesn't have those terrible panels of "strategists" from both sides spitting out their dueling talking points. Her guests spots are almost always one-and-one and often the guest is there to bring some sort of context to a major news story she's already spent most of a segment laying out for viewers in intricate detail. Her guest list is heavy with federal prosecutors, presidential historians and reporters who more often than not broke the story everyone else is yakking about.

Rachel Maddow rarely provides commentary on a news story and in fact will often go out of her way to try and be as fair as she can to the people she covers. She doesn't come off as malicious and doesn't adopt the self-righteous tone of some of her competitors on both other news networks. She's a news wonk in the best sense of the phrase and maybe...just maybe...that might have been a worthwhile point for Politico to bring up when discussing MSNBC's ratings boost.

On the other hand, that's not a likely outcome in a piece that quotes a Republican strategist, two Democratic strategists, a partner at a strategy group and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Great sources for a story about changing political party fortunes. But not so great if you are trying to parse why a cable news channel (and its primetime star) are having a banner ratings season.