A former MSNBC producer did not enjoy her time working for Lawrence O’Donnell and decided to tell the world about it.
Ariana Pekary, who was the booking and segment producer for The Last Word according to her website and LinkedIn page, left the show last month and published an essay Monday describing the issues she had with her former employer.
Pekary, who said she doesn’t know what her next step will be “exactly,” claimed that she “simply couldn’t stand [it] there anymore,” given that “the problem is the job itself” because it “forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis.”
“Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience. There may be some truth to that (our education system really should improve the critical thinking skills of Americans) — but another hard truth is that it is the job of journalists to teach and inform, which means they might need to figure out a better way to do that,” she wrote. “They could contemplate more creative methods for captivating an audience.”
Pekary, who is also an ex-NPR staffer, claimed that MSNBC often prioritized ratings over news value.
“The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices — it’s practically baked in to the editorial process — and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it’s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it’s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing,” she wrote, before adding that doing a story “without regard for how it rates” is more “the exception, not the rule.”
Neither Pekary nor MSNBC responded to requests for comment regarding her resignation and her tenure with the network.
