Melissa Harris-Perry is out at MSNBC. Last week, the TV host and Wake Forest professor announced via an e-mail to staff (which was promptly made public) that she wouldn’t be appearing on her namesake show.
Today (Feb. 29), MSNBC confirmed her exit, which over the weekend was in the air since she didn’t report the show.
Reports the New York Times:
In a phone interview, Ms. Harris-Perry confirmed she would not appear on the show this weekend. She said she had received no word about whether her show, which runs from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays, had been canceled, but said she was frustrated that her time slot had faced pre-emptions for coverage of the presidential election. She said she had not appeared on the network at all “for weeks” and that she was mostly sidelined during recent election coverage in South Carolina and New Hampshire. (She was asked to return this weekend.)
In her email, Ms. Harris-Perry wrote that she was not sure if the NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, or Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, were involved in the way her show was handled recently, but she directed blame toward both.
“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.”
Ms. Harris-Perry is black, and Mr. Lack and Mr. Griffin are white. In the phone interview on Friday, Ms. Harris-Perry clarified her remarks and said she did not think race played a role in her recent absence from the air.
“I don’t know if there is a personal racial component,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is doing something mean to me because I’m a black person.”
Part of the friction between Harris-Perry and her bosses were the topics covered on the show. Apparently, discussing Beyoncé’s controversial (for sensitive cops) video for “Formation” was a point of contention.
Said the NYT:
She said that last month the onscreen branding for her show was replaced by MSNBC’s slogan, “The Place for Politics.” With the election heating up, her show was pre-empted each of the last two weeks and for the most recent edition, on Super Bowl Sunday, she was told to talk mostly about the presidential race.
She still did speak about other topics, including Beyoncé’s new video for her song “Formation” and how it addressed race. But perhaps in a sign of the network’s shifting priorities, as she and her guests engaged in a lengthy discussion about the video, live video of rallies for Jeb Bush and Chris Christie in New Hampshire played in a box on the screen as well.
The Bey Hive isn’t going to get Harris-Perry her job back, though.
Also, it’s strange that she stated she’s no one’s “mammy” or “token,” yet isn’t firm on her alleged slights being due to race. Nevertheless, you have to be willing to stand for what you believe in, right?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
—
Photo: WENN.com
