Is NBC Becoming Fox News Lite?

I don’t know who the next president will be, but it appears some of the media’s most powerful executives have a hunch and are acquiescing accordingly.

In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, NBC made the curious decision to tell Joe Scarborough, one of its most well-known and experienced anchors, and his co-host Mika Brzezinski to take Monday morning off.

According to the network, there was no political motivation behind the move — sharing via a statement that “given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story,” it would be best to have “one news feed covering this developing situation.”

It sounds fine on its surface, but after the network told “Morning Joe” hosts, producers and staff members its decision, the show was not preempted by NBC’s flagship morning news show, “ Today ,” which aired as usual. Instead, MSNBC viewers awoke to coverage from the company’s digital news service, NBC News Now.

As for the promise that other MSNBC shows like “ Deadline: White House” would face the same fate as “ Morning Joe ,” those shows went on without interruption, which sparked the ire of Scarborough and Brzezinski. The show’s co-hosts, who married in 2018, made their disappointment about the discrepancy abundantly clear live on air the following day.

“We were told, in no uncertain terms, on a Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels yesterday … we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday,” Scarborough said of Monday’s telecast.

“We don’t know why that didn’t happen,” he continued. “Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t