MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made a fool of herself this week.
Her embarrassment, which will likely follow her for months, is a good reminder that you should never overpromise and under deliver.
Maddow grabbed an enormous amount of attention Tuesday evening by announcing suddenly on social media: “BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously).”
President Trump refused throughout the 2016 election to release his tax returns, choosing instead to hide behind an assortment of thin and questionable excuses. So Maddow’s surprise announcement caused no small amount of shock and excitement within media circles. Reporters, pundits and politicos swarmed the story, eagerly theorizing about what the documents contained and how the cable news host managed to acquire them.
She then tweeted a full hour later, “What we’ve got is from 2005… the President’s 1040 form… details to come tonight 9PM ET, MSNBC.”
Though her clarification caused irritation among those who had previously gushed about the possibilities, many tuned into her program anyway, hoping to learn something new – scandalous even! – about the president.
Maddow kicked off her show with a 15-minute-plus monologue on the nature of modern politics, the need for transparency, the nature of truth, etc. Her show then went to commercial break. Viewers grew impatient.
Maddow finally got around to her supposedly big story. As she spoke, holding up two pieces of paper bearing financial data, it dawned on viewers that they’d been baited with a boring story. All she had were two pages from Trump’s 2005 tax filings. The documents are authentic, and they were obtained first by Daily Beast columnist David Cay Johnston, but they don’t contain anything of much interest to anyone.
The documents produced on the Maddow program, which were client copies, by the way, show the Queens businessman paid more than $30 million in taxes in 2005. They also showed that he saved a great deal of money by declaring some business losses.
That’s it. That was Maddow’s entire story.
Viewers were understandably disappointed, and many lashed out on social media. A few MSNBC staffers moved quickly to defend the fiasco.
“We have information now that we did not have yesterday on a story the public has a continued interest in seeing reported. Quit your whining,” said reporter Benjy Sarlin.
He’s not wrong. However, neither are the people who mocked and criticized the host’s handling of the issue.
If you lead someone to believe you got them a new Rolls Royce, but it’s really a 1991 Toyota Tercel with no brakes or seats, the recipient has a right to be annoyed.
The angry reactions to Maddow’s mangled media moment are a reminder that you should never overhype a story. Had she handled it more carefully, and had she been more honest about what she had when she baited audiences prior to her show’s airing, then she wouldn’t have to contend right now with disappointed viewers.
Maddow’s flop was so complete and total that it’s difficult to think of a modern equivalent. The closest media failure that comes to mind is when Geraldo Rivera hyped the opening of a vault previously owned by the Chicago gangster Al Capone. The vault turned out to be empty, as Geraldo discovered on April 21, 1986, as he opened it in front of a national audience on live television. It is arguably still the most memorable moment of Geraldo’s career.
In many ways, Maddow’s failure feels a lot like the modern-day version of the vault debacle. The difference here is Geraldo didn’t know the vault was empty, and that there was no story.
What’s Maddow’s excuse?
