Networks approach angry Republicans with caution

Television networks are raising their security levels in Milwaukee and two major cable television networks dialed back their coverage of the Republican National Convention response to anger from the right at the media in the wake of Saturday’s attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump.

NBC News pulled its flagship Morning Joe program on Monday, CNN reported, in order to avoid the possibility that a guest may make “an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.” (A network spokesperson emphatically denied the story to the Washington Post, saying that it wanted to cover the breaking news with what the paper described as “a unified broadcast feed among NBC News, its cable sibling MSNBC and the streaming network NBC News Now.”)

CNN also altered its programming plans in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, a sign of scheduling fluidity and concerns about the anger of Republicans gathered in Milwaukee.

The news network decided to keep some of its highest profile anchors away from Milwaukee for the first days of the convention. Three network insiders told Semafor that several prominent primetime on-air personalities, chief among them Anderson Cooper, were scheduled to broadcast live from the Republican National Convention on Monday, but instead decided to stay in New York. The move came as CNN and other news outlets with staff on the ground heightened their security following Saturday’s shooting.

A CNN spokesperson said it was inaccurate to report that enhanced security guided the decision to keep them out of Milwaukee, saying that programming logistics related to weekend coverage of the assassination attempt on Trump kept them in New York. The spokesperson suggested that more high-profile anchors will likely be on the ground in the coming days, and pointed to the roster of anchors who were already broadcasting from the RNC.

And at least two television networks raised the level of security around their employees covering the convention, people familiar with those decisions said.

It’s a cautious moment for big media, after the heady and confrontational early Trump years. The networks’ moves this week reflect a recognition of the spike in anger at the news media following Saturday’s shooting, and a concern about the security of high-profile television talent. In a striking moment seen by millions of people, immediately after the shooting, some attendees at Saturday’s Trump rally blamed the assembled news media.

For MSNBC, the concern seemed to focus on its on-air content. The programming decision reflected an era of increased caution and sensitivity the network has had in sensitive moments about appearing to be too far to the left.

Subbing out its most well-known experienced hosts on one of the biggest news days of the year was a puzzling move from MSNBC. Morning Joe has been a bright spot in the lineup, one of the rare programs that despite its overt friendliness to Biden nevertheless continues to break through this election cycle. Just a few days earlier, multiple network higher-ups had touted the network’s centrality to the 2024 election, and a spokesperson for the network had shared promotional material for the show and touted its strong ratings immediately after the debate. It promptly backfired, alienating some left-leaning media critics and viewers. The network had briefly planned to shift hosts Nicolle Wallace and Ari Melber from their slots as well, but abandoned the plan this morning amid viewer backlash and media coverage of the decision not to air Morning Joe.

Monday’s Morning Joe shakeup closely mirrored a previous instance last year in which the network briefly took three of its Muslim broadcasters out of the anchor’s chair after October 7 and replaced them with talent with less expertise on the subject. The network’s rationale on Monday also directly contradicted arguments that NBCU gave Semafor in October for why it temporarily replaced several of its Muslim hosts. At the time, NBCU argued that it was passing over weekend hosts and keeping its well-known personalities on the air in order to provide stability for viewers rather than going with less recognizable hosts. On Monday, it did the opposite, subbing in its Morning Joe hosts with weekend anchors.

The networks’ cautious approach limits reporting, and often cedes ground to spaces where people speak freely, such as social media. There, you’ll find the sharp and immediate criticism of Trump that MSNBC didn’t want on its airwaves. But the news media’s caution also kept incorrect information out of mainstream sources at a moment of heightened tension, and likely contributed to a more sober and factual view of events than the versions shared on places like Reddit and X.

• “The crowd was angry. Middle fingers were everywhere. They asked the press if they were happy and blamed the media. ‘You did this,’ they said to reporters,” James Pindell wrote in the Boston Globe.
• Part of J.D. Vance’s appeal to Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. said, was his ability to go into “enemy territory, from a media perspective, doing the most liberal TV shows, and prosecute the case for my father and against the Democrat lunacy that we’ve seen,” Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reported.