\n<\/p>\n
J<\/span>oy Reid hosted the 7pm hour on MSNBC for nearly five years, providing a daily dose of progressive energy and verve that led into the network\u2019s primetime programming. Then, in late February, Reid was suddenly forced out, and her show, The ReidOut, was cancelled as part of a broader programming shakeup at the network. Reid has since launched her own streaming show, The Joy Reid Show, and has a few things to say about the mainstream media she was once part of.<\/p>\n Now that it\u2019s been eight months since you were abruptly fired by MSNBC, how do you view your departure? <\/strong><\/p>\n I still miss my team. I love my little ReidOut team. We had a great family. We had an amazing, amazing time. And I love the people that I worked with, but I overall see my departure as a blessing, to be honest. I think in this moment, not being a part of corporate media is actually a gift. Because from now, on the outside looking in, I don\u2019t know that I could live with the kind of restrictions that people in corporate media are facing. So I think \u2013 it was a blessing.<\/p>\n What kind of restrictions are you referring to?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s that these corporations are all doing business with the administration. They all have business before the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], and therefore they are going to make their content and the journalism being done at those institutions \u2013 they\u2019re going to make it bow to the bigger corporate need.<\/p>\n In other words, Comcast is a donor to the Epstein ballroom. They\u2019re going to give money to Donald Trump. Everyone is paying him. ABC paid him off, CBS paid him off, Comcast \u2013 they\u2019re all bowing to his will or writing him a check. And therefore, everyone who works in those organizations has to be mindful that if they displease Donald Trump, if he notices their journalism and it makes him mad, he could have his Project 2025-author FCC chair [Brendan Carr] punish them.<\/p>\n If they have too much diversity, if they have too many Black people on air, if they hire too many minorities, too many gay people, too many women, if they\u2019re too visibly diverse, he could have his FCC punish them.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m looking at each of these entities. I\u2019m looking at CBS being warped by being owned by a Trump fan who\u2019s gobbling up the media, he and his dad [David and Larry Ellison], our new Murdochs, eating up the media.<\/p>\n <\/span>Larry Ellison at the White House on 21 January 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Aaron Schwartz\/CNP\/Dpa Picture Alliance\/Alamy<\/p>\n And you can see the results at CBS News: mass firings at Paramount CBS. You can already see CBS News running stories under Bari Weiss that they would never, never have run, questioning whether the Gaza death count was real or whether people were dying of natural causes. The things that are happening at CBS \u2013 I can almost feel the visceral pain that CBS News employees have got to be feeling having this Substacker be their boss when they are longtime, experienced journalists having to answer to a rightwing Substacker. And a rightwing ombudsman.<\/p>\n You know, I\u2019m watching ABC and you\u2019re hearing these stories of even the View being pressured: \u201cNot so much anti-Trumpism, please.\u201d They\u2019re there to comment on the news of the day, but, you know, curtail that. I\u2019m hearing from friends that still work at MS NOW [MSNBC\u2019s new name], whatever its new name is, having to work in a place that fired Matt Dowd for saying an absolutely true and inoffensive fact and now having to realize that he was dismissed summarily for saying a true thing about Charlie Kirk, and each of them could be as well. And knowing the pressures that are on the people there about what they can and cannot say, and that those pressures are being \u2013 they\u2019re coming as Comcast has business before the administration, as ABC Disney does, as CBS Paramount does.<\/p>\n It seemed notable that top executives at Comcast, MSNBC\u2019s owner, issued a memo denouncing Dowd\u2019s comments about Kirk. [Dowd had said, after the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, that \u201chateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions<\/strong>\u201d.]<\/strong><\/p>\n The things I hear just internally of people just feeling less freedom to do the journalism they know that they\u2019re capable of. I mean, look, Rachel Maddow is still Rachel Maddow-ing. You know what I mean? Lawrence O\u2019Donnell is still Lawrence O\u2019Donnell-ing. The great journalists at MSNBC are still doing the great stuff they\u2019ve done, and they\u2019re still really tough on the administration. They\u2019re still holding to their brands and to their integrity. So I\u2019m not saying everyone is being suppressed. Obviously the voices are getting out. Chris Hayes is still Chris Hayes-ing. You know what I mean? I still see and hear the clips of people still doing the work. But the problem is everyone in this business right now, if you work for a corporate media entity, you know over your shoulder stands Donald Trump and Brendan Carr.<\/p>\n <\/span>Matthew Dowd during an ABC election special on 3 March 2020.<\/span> Photograph: Lorenzo Bevilaqua\/ABC via Getty Images<\/p>\n Everyone knows that, whether you\u2019re in cable or broadcast. Brendan Carr cannot regulate cable news, but he can regulate Comcast. He can regulate your boss\u2019s boss. And so I feel like I personally am grateful to not have to wake up every morning worrying about what punishment Brendan Carr might mete out to my organization and my company based on the journalism I do on my little show. I don\u2019t want to wake up and think about that. I don\u2019t want to think about, you know, whether or not Donald Trump tweeting at me somehow impacts my staff or impacts my executive producer or could get them in trouble. I am thankful not to have to think about that. [An MSNBC spokesperson said in response that \u201cviewers who watch MSNBC any day of the week know that the values and tone of our coverage have not changed\u201d.]<\/p>\n When you were at MSNBC, did you feel like you had the ability to push back on some of your larger coverage concerns at the network, or did you feel you had to stay in your lane?<\/strong><\/p>\n I pretty much just focused on my show. I wasn\u2019t there to be a critic of the way the network operated. Two ways that I did have some frustration was the amount of time we spent going live to Trump \u2013 when I was on my weekend show really. This was a big tension, and I think this was a tension that\u2019s normal. I didn\u2019t feel like every time Donald Trump belched we had to go live to him. And look, we had a difference of opinion. I didn\u2019t want to go live to him, for instance, when he was at the National Cathedral, but the Women\u2019s March was going on. And we have that tension. And so that\u2019s normal stuff that happens inside of a network.<\/p>\n I definitely feel like on the coverage of Gaza, I had tremendous frustration that I felt like it was very difficult for us to get the other side of the story. And that wasn\u2019t because of our network, that was because of the government of Israel not allowing journalists into Gaza and not allowing any objective reporting without a minder. And so that wasn\u2019t my frustration with my network, that was a frustration with a foreign government that was trying to shape coverage of a genocide. But internally, I will say, you could feel that coverage of the genocide as a genocide was unwanted and that the people that I worked for were not really enthusiastic, I\u2019ll say, about the coverage of that genocide as a genocide. That was not wanted. And now that I\u2019ve left, I feel like that definitely contributed to my departure. Because I think when you see a genocide happening, you have an obligation as a journalist to cover it as what it is.<\/p>\n Where did you draw the line<\/strong> when you felt it was worth calling out your network on air and potentially risk your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n Specifically on the Gaza issue, I felt like: \u201cWhat was the point of having the platform if I couldn\u2019t speak out against a genocide?\u201d On that one, I knew that it was risky, and I had people constantly telling me: \u201cPlease stop talking about Gaza. You\u2019re going to get fired.\u201d I had people, even including my own family, who were worried about me, but to be honest with you, I never dreamed in a million years that they would lay off my whole staff. Normally they just lay off the host or cancel the show, and then they make the host a contributor.<\/p>\n <\/span>Palestinian families returning to Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip are continuing their lives with limited means amidst buildings reduced to rubble by attacks on 6 November 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Omar Ashtawy\/APAImages via Shutterstock<\/p>\n I think what pushed Rachel [Maddow, who called the cancellation a \u201cbad mistake\u201d] to speak out in an incredibly valiant way, and I love and adore her, by the way \u2013 I think she is so brave and such a great journalist \u2013 but I think what pushed her was what enraged all of us, which is that they didn\u2019t just cancel my show. You can cancel my show. I don\u2019t own Comcast. I don\u2019t own MSNBC. They laid off our whole staffs. Like, that is not normal. And I think if you go back and listen to her rant, it wasn\u2019t just about me, it was about these incredible journalists, including on her own staff, on all of our staffs. That is not the way MSNBC has ever operated. \u2026 These are not people who are making millions of dollars a year. These are people with mortgages and rent to pay and families and children. And I was shocked that that happened to my team. Would I have felt differently if I thought my staff was in jeopardy? Yeah, I would have been more circumspect, but I still feel like I would have covered Gaza the way I did, honestly. I don\u2019t regret that at all, because I think that is our obligation as journalists. I felt like I had to do it, but I would have had in the back of my mind my staff was in jeopardy. I never thought that. [The vast majority of Reid\u2019s staffers were ultimately able to get other jobs at the network.]<\/p>\n Were you heartened that some of your former colleagues in MSNBC <\/strong>\u2013 Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O\u2019Donnell and Stephanie Ruhle <\/strong>\u2013 called out Comcast for their donation to the East Wing ballroom project?<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely. And they are the best of people. I\u2019m so heartened by it, and yes, I think it\u2019s brave, I think it\u2019s smart, and I think they had to do it. \u2026 I feel like we have to have some integrity in journalism. Had they not said anything about Comcast giving to this ballroom, I think they wouldn\u2019t have been able to sleep at night. So I\u2019m glad they did it.<\/p>\n And I assume you would have done it also, if you were still on?<\/strong><\/p>\n A hundred percent. Oh, a thousand percent. If I was still there, a thousand percent.<\/p>\n Have you found that your cable news audience has moved with you to your streaming show?<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely, yeah. People who enjoyed me, people will still find me on Substack. They\u2019re still gonna find me on my YouTube show, on The Joy Reid Show. They\u2019ll still find me on my TikTok, on my [Instagram]. It\u2019s just that it fragments the audience because they\u2019re not all having to go to MSNBC. I have found that people are finding me where they\u2019re comfortable and the mediums in which they\u2019re comfortable. \u2026 It\u2019s just a matter of you understanding in this business that you are your brand and that your company is not your brand.<\/p>\n And you\u2019ve found it to be a good business so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, and I was not a YouTube person, so I\u2019m very new to it. Thank god we have great partners. \u2026 So I have found a soft landing, and I\u2019m grateful for the audience, and I\u2019m very grateful to the partners that we have. And we\u2019re building a business. Now it is different, right? My husband and I have had a production company for many, many years, but we haven\u2019t had to make it our primary focus because we\u2019ve always been doing other things. But now we\u2019re focusing on it full-time and we are leaning into our entrepreneurial era. My husband\u2019s been at it a lot longer because he was running that side of the business for a while. \u2026 Now we\u2019re working on our own and I\u2019m loving it. I\u2019m loving the independence.<\/p>\n Is there anything you miss about having a nightly cable news show?<\/strong><\/p>\n I am realizing it is an incredible blessing to have 15 staffers, 15 producers to make your TV. I used to be a booking producer, I used to be a producer-producer, a news producer, and I am a booking producer and a news producer again. It is so much more work. I am so blessed with our team, but our team are part-timers. We don\u2019t have a full-time staff. Our full-time staff is my husband, myself. We hired our daughter to work for us. But we are a tiny, tiny, tiny team, so it is a lot harder to do things with far fewer people.<\/p>\n Last week, CBS News gutted their <\/strong>race and <\/strong>culture unit. NBC News also recently made cuts affecting its teams dedicated to covering Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ communities. Do you think we are seeing an intentional unwinding of some of the moves that were made by media companies in response to the events of 2020 and the backlash to George Floyd\u2019s killing?<\/strong><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t because of George Floyd. It was because Barack Obama got elected. And suddenly these corporations were really being pushed by the [National Association of Black Journalists] and [National Association of Hispanic Journalists] and also by the LGBTQ organizations that work with the media to say,: \u201cHey, we need representation. You have a Black president. You need more voices, right?\u201d And so these initiatives really were born around the Obama administration. I think the demise of them in the wake of this backlash against the George Floyd DEI revolution is part of the national backlash. There is just a general backlash among conservatives against any diversity initiatives or even any diversity, period, in the country. \u2026<\/p>\n It feels like the media is capitulating to that and that they\u2019re aligning their own policies with the administration self-protectively, because they don\u2019t want to be punished. But also I think partly because in some ways these major media companies, which again are not run by liberals, they\u2019re run by people who are maybe libertarian to somewhat conservative, they\u2019ve been relieved of the burden of having to do diversity. So they don\u2019t want to do it. If you did it reluctantly anyway, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really bothering you to get rid of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joy Reid hosted the 7pm hour on MSNBC for nearly five years, providing a daily dose of progressive energy and verve that led into the network\u2019s primetime programming. Then, in late February, Reid was suddenly forced out, and her show, The ReidOut, was cancelled as part of a broader programming shakeup at the network. Reid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[4219,3972,1403,205,90,10160,150,16544,3056,18821],"class_list":{"0":"post-32657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-corporate","9":"tag-gift","10":"tag-joy","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-moment","13":"tag-msnbc","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-ouster","16":"tag-part","17":"tag-reid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}