Fox News’s Howard Kurtz criticized MSNBC for their coverage of the impeachment hearings last week because it was hosted by opinion commentators and not journalists.
On his Sunday show Media Buzz, Kurtz pointed out who hosted the coverage for each network. The conservative-leaning outlet had Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Martha MacCallum anchor their coverage of William Taylor, the top diplomat in Ukraine, George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Comparatively, CNN had Dana Bash, Gloria Borger, Anderson Cooper, and John King on their coverage.
Kurtz remarked that those individuals are “all journalists.”
MSNBC opted to have Brian Williams talk to Nicolle Wallace, former Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, former Obama Solicitor General Neal Katyal, and George Conway, the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. On Friday’s hearing coverage, Chris Matthews replaced Williams. Kurtz remarked that the competing network “didn’t bother with journalists,” and quipped that, “no one in the mainstream media raises an eyebrow at that.”
He also claimed the network “abandoned the notion” of unbiased coverage.
“I don’t have any problem with any network putting on opinionated people as long as there’s some representation from both sides,” Kurtz added. “Maybe I’m old fashioned. This is the impeachment of a president of the United States, and you don’t have journalists as anchors? You have a guy who — I’m not knocking the people individually, but Chris Matthews is a former Democratic anchor who does this for a living.”
