To their credit, CNN and Fox News have reported on the war in Yemen.
In April, AdWeek ran a piece calling MSNBC the “Network of the Resistance.” In February, the New York Times exalted MSNBC’s Joy Reid as a “Heroine of The Resistance.” What exactly does that mean?
On July 23, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) issued an “action alert”: July 2nd marked the one-year anniversary since MSNBC had last run a segment mentioning the U.S. participation in the war on Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, in which 22 million people — three-quarters of the population — remain in desperate need of food, water, and medical aid.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and eight other Sunni Arab states began their siege of Yemen, already the poorest of the Gulf nations. With logistical and intelligence support from the U.S., the U.K., and France, Saudi-led airstrikes have caused 52,800 injuries and 60 percent of civilian deaths, totaling nearly 10,000 deaths since the advent of the war, the United Nations reports.
What has the “Network of The Resistance” chosen to report on 455 times in the past year, while every ten minutes one child under the age of five dies from starvation?
President Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
The same week that Rachel Maddow was moved to tears on national television while reading an Associated Press report regarding the “tender age” shelters in South Texas, Yemeni civilians in Hodeidah were dodging airstrikes, part of the Saudis’ “Operation Golden Victory,” which claimed 280 lives that week alone.
Joy Reid, one of Maddow’s colleagues, is no stranger, either, to the virtue-signaling galore that Maddow is famous for.
In a New York Times article titled “How Joy Reid of MSNBC Became a Heroine of the Resistance,” Reid is quoted telling the Syracuse University class she teaches on race, gender, and media that “something is ‘true’ because you like it. If the information is displeasing to you or makes you uncomfortable, or is in opposition to your ideology, then it is ‘fake.’”
The Reid-rhapsody goes on to note that she’s “concerned consumers of news will isolate themselves, believing only what makes them feel good.”
“That’s the problem,” she said.
While MSNBC was focusing on the scandal, their rivals at CNN and Fox News were following the developments in Yemen. On July 26, CNN published a video showing the poverty in the country and a resource-aid drop. On July 29, Fox News published a piece depicting witnesses’ accounts of the heavy fighting that killed dozens near Hodeida.
Joy Reid says there’s a “problem.” It’s more likely that it’s MSNBC’s blind spot to significant issues their viewers would benefit from learning about.