{"id":82,"date":"2010-10-06T04:45:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T04:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/msnbc-embraces-political-bias-in-new-ad-campaign.html"},"modified":"2010-10-06T04:45:01","modified_gmt":"2010-10-06T04:45:01","slug":"msnbc-embraces-political-bias-in-new-ad-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/10\/msnbc-embraces-political-bias-in-new-ad-campaign.html","title":{"rendered":"MSNBC embraces political bias in new ad campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 11th MSNBC will launch a new ad campaign with the slogan Lean Forward<\/i>. You can view two of the planned spots here<\/a>. They may as well just replace the word “Forward” <\/i>with “Progressive<\/i>” because that’s the not-so-subtle message. <\/p>\n

The first spot, particularly, is built around a secular progressive paraphrasing of the Declaration of Independence:<\/p>\n

We hold these truths to be self evident.<\/i>
\nthat all men and women have certain unalienable rights – life, liberty, pursuit of happiness<\/i>
\nAnd the freedom to believe that, while history has gotten us this far, the best days are still ahead.<\/i>
\nWe are the United States of “Come As You Are,” <\/i>
\nOur differences are what unite us.<\/i>
\nSo, starting today, may the ideas that advance our country, no matter who or where they come from, win<\/i> <\/div>\n

 
Not surprisingly, the rewording of the Declaration omits any reference to our Creator and, in the imagery celebrating America’s diversity, does not include single shot of a church, synagogue, temple or mosque.       <\/p>\n

In announcing the new campaign, Sharon Otterman, the network’s chief marketing officer, said “We’re not just creating advertisements. We are building a stronger consumer
\nbrand that differentiates us from the competition and prepares us for future
\ngrowth.” <\/i><\/p>\n

There was a time when a purportedly mainstream news organization would prefer its “consumer brand” to be one of fair and unbiased reporting of the news, not leaning<\/i> in any direction at all. Apparently those days are gone — at least at MSNBC.<\/p>\n

While it’s true that Fox News has found great success positioning itself on the other side of the political ledger, there are important differences in the two networks’ approaches. <\/p>\n

For one thing, Fox’s famous “Fair & Balanced” slogan at least embraces the ideal of being, well, fair and balanced. With it’s new slogan, MSNBC is throwing that ideal under the marketing bus.<\/p>\n

Secondly, at least when I worked there about ten years ago, there’s a genuine attempt at Fox News to erect firewalls between its news reporting and its opinion programs (i.e. The O’Reilly Factor<\/i>).  Though, to be honest, that firewall, it seems to me, has eroded a bit in the past couple of years. The new MSNBC slogan, however, suggests that such firewalls are all but eviscerated at the network.   <\/p>\n

A third difference is that the right-leaning perspective of Fox News actually does differentiate it from the rest of the television news landscape. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS all tilt to the left (to varying degrees). Polls<\/a> show that Americans believe the media as a whole to be biased toward the left. So, while Fox News fulfilled an actual need for a different perspective, MSNBC simply doesn’t. It’s chief differentiating factor is that it’s just more “out there” with its bias.<\/p>\n

Bottom line, I believe the strategy will backfire. It’s simply a marketing mistake for a mainstream media outlet to brand itself as politically biased. I think Kelsey Grammer’s new Right Network<\/a> is making the same mistake from the conservative side of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

People are smart enough to figure out a network’s perspective and biases by themselves. They want to feel that a network “gets”<\/i> their point of view but they also want to believe that at least some<\/i> effort is made toward fairness. Ordinary Americans know its important to hear all sides of an issue. All Sides<\/i>. Hmm. A slogan for CNN?
   <\/p>\n


<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On October 11th MSNBC will launch a new ad campaign with the slogan Lean Forward. You can view two of the planned spots here. They may as well just replace the word “Forward” with “Progressive” because that’s the not-so-subtle message. 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Kennedy","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","caption":"John W. Kennedy"},"description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media & Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations & Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}