By D.R. Tucker on 2/11/2015, 6:35am PT  

I hate having to agree with Fox Opinion Channel personality Megyn Kelly, but I can't dispute her point about the bizarre segment on the February 8 edition of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, in which Harris-Perry actually asked outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder to quack like a duck.

Granted, MSNBC's weekend programming hasn't been the same since Chris Hayes left Up in 2013 to host his weeknight broadcast All In, but this segment was just too daffy. Holder, who answered graciously nonetheless, seemed to know that something had gone off the rails; while responding to Harris-Perry, he seemed to be second-guessing his decision to participate in the interview.

Reportedly, there has been a lot of second-guessing at the network, and it's not hard to understand why. MSNBC has a credibility problem --- though its not about ducks or even Brian Williams --- but a segment on the February 9 edition of The Ed Show unintentionally highlighted its magnitude...

In that segment, host Ed Schultz discussed President Obama's remarks in a recent interview with Matthew Yglesias of Vox, in which Obama observed that the press tends to give the climate issue short shrift, while obsessing over issues such as terrorism.

Schultz, Ring of Fire radio host and attorney Mike Papantonio, League of Conservation Voters Senior VP for Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld and conservation biologist Reese Halter noted that the mainstream media had indeed been negligent about covering the climate crisis, with Papantonio specifically citing the role of the Fox Opinion Channel in warping the climate conversation.

The problem with the segment was that one could not watch it without remembering that MSNBC is:

As great as MSNBC hosts Hayes, Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Alex Wagner are on the climate issue, it's hard to deny that in many respects, MSNBC has itself ducked its journalistic obligation to provide comprehensive coverage of the most significant issue of our time, presumably due to concerns about offending fossil-fuel advertisers. The Fox Opinion Channel has certainly poisoned the waters of scientific discussion, but MSNBC also deserves criticism for not giving the climate crisis top billing.

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D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe Magazine, ClimateCrocks.com and FrumForum.com, among others. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010, and served as a co-host of On the Green Front with Betsy Rosenberg on the Progressive Radio Network from August 2011 to March 2014. Currently, he is a contributor to the Climate Minute and Climate Notes podcasts for the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.

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