MSNBC Cancels Mehdi Hasan's Show

(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was on the Daily Show last night flogging his new book “Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking.” But it appears that Hasan’s expertise in winning every argument is open to question after MSNBC announced today that it was cancelling his weekend show on the network.

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MSNBC has canceled far-left host Mehdi Hasan’s Sunday night program as part of a major weekend programming shift.

Hasan will lose his weekend show as well as his show on the Peacock streaming service, but will stay at the network as an on-camera analyst and fill-in host.

Known as one of the more pugnacious liberal media figures in cable news, Hasan joined MSNBC in 2020 after stints at Al Jazeera and the hard-left site The Intercept.

It’s tempting to blame Hasan’s ousting on his far left stance against Israel. The entire network has been criticized for refusing to refer to Hamas as terrorists.

NewsNation host Dan Abrams tore into MSNBC for “whataboutisms and false equivalencies” in their coverage and commentary about the war between Israel and Hamas…

Abrams went on to name Mehdi Hasan and Ali Velshi, both of whom urged focus on what Israel will do to Palestine, even as Israel reels from an attack that just devastated the country.

But the Daily Beast points out that the weekend hosts MSNBC is keeping on aren’t much different from Hasan.

Hasan has come under fire recently over his coverage of the Gaza war, specifically from conservative critics angry over his pro-Palestinian stance. Last month, Semafor reported that Hasan was one of three Muslim broadcasters who had been quietly pulled from the anchor’s desk following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. A network official vehemently denied Semafor’s reporting that Hasan and others had been sidelined.

The same criticism Hasan has received over Israel-Hamas coverage from media rivals, however, has also followed fellow Muslim-American colleagues Velshi and Mohyeldin, who have retained their shows and even seen their roles expanded. Furthermore, as Confider reported in September, the revamped weekend lineup was already being hashed out prior to the start of the conflict in Gaza.

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So if it’s not his position on Israel, what is it? Earlier this year he was accused of plagiarism for copying large portions of an article about spanking without any credit to the original authors.

Investigative reporter Lee Fang published a report on his Substack Tuesday accusing the “Mehdi Hasan Show” host of “passing off others’ reporting as his own,” pointing to several unattributed sentences from a 2000 Independent column he authored titled “No Harm In Smacking,” that reads almost verbatim to a U.S. News and World Report article headlined “When to Spank,” published two years earlier.

That probably didn’t help but it was a long time ago. Semaphor suggests a much simpler reason for Hasan’s cancelation. “Hasan became a cult favorite online for his tough interview style and impassioned monologues. But these never translated to ratings successes…”

Or maybe it’s a combination of two things. The NY Post suggests that’s what happened here.

A source close to the left-leaning cable channel said the network is “cutting costs like crazy” and that the penny-pinching was a “good excuse” to dump the British-born commentator.

“I think they thought (Hasan’s) point of view was a little too out of the mainstream if you know what I mean,” a source with knowledge of the situation told The Post…

He averaged 617,000 viewers for his show on Oct. 1, the last one before the Hamas massacre six days later — when terrorists crossed the Israel-Gaza border using paragliders and pickup trucks and slaughtered some 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Since then, Hasan’s show has failed to garner more than 500,000 viewers. On Nov. 12, it hit a low point with just 37,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic and 411,000 total — well behind his rivals at Fox and CNN, according to Nielsen.

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Even MSNBC viewers get tired of zero nuance pretty quickly.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | December 12, 2024
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