Taking another leap toward the dark side, MSNBC announced today that they have hired Kevin Magee to serve as executive in charge of Morning Joe, the three hour block of programming hosted by former Republican representative Joe Scarborough. Magee is a former executive vice-president at Fox News.

The immediate ramifications of this staff change will not be particularly earth shattering. The program is already a bastion of right-wing propaganda with predominantly conservative punditry. However it does represent a congealing of the Fox Effect on the mainstream media. It is an advance of the virus emanating from Fox to infect other networks with their deliberately deceitful approach to journalism.

Morning Joe already has a weakened immune system. Last year they added Amy Holmes to their roster of contributors. Holmes is also the anchor of Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze Internet Video program. Scarborough himself is hopelessly biased and nearly oblivious to the right-wing dominance of the press. In November he went on an extended rant demanding his guests to name a single Republican on a nightly news program (they couldn’t, but I could). And Morning Joe is the MSNBC home of Donald Trump, who has become a regular fixture on the show – and nowhere else on the network.

One thing that this should put an end to is the talk that MSNBC is the liberal answer to Fox News. That has never been true, mainly because, while MSNBC was generally more progressive, it remained fact-based as opposed to the blatant lying that is the hallmark of Fox. More to the point, Fox News would never give a three hour block of airtime (soon to be expanding to four hours) to a liberal ex-congressman, but Scarborough not only has that, but is also featured on NBC’s Meet the Press. Just imagine if Fox & Friends was hosted by Anthony Weiner or if Sean Hannity were replaced by Rachel Maddow.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Since NBC/Universal was bought by Comcast, MSNBC has undergone some troubling changes. Comcast’s owners, the conservative Roberts family, insisted that there would be no substantive changes, but Ed Schultz, Joy Reid, and Alex Wagner lost their shows shortly after the acquisition. And now they are beginning to stuff the deck with right-wing pundits and producers. This cannot possibly lead to anything positive for the network. If they were smart they would recall that when Keith Olbermann was on in primetime, his show regularly challenged, and occasionally beat, Fox’s O’Reilly Factor. And Olbermann just happens to be available now.