ANALYSIS/OPINION:

NBC News may have thought they dodged a bullet with the White House Correspondence Dinner taking all the attention from their host Joy Reid’s pathetic and disingenuous apology/non-apology over her past homophobic blog posts and subsequent obfuscations and distortions to cover-up the controversy. But, apparently, they didn’t.

Since Reid’s ridiculous contention that she “genuinely (did) not believe (she) wrote those hateful things” and her immediate apology for writing those things she genuinely believed she didn’t write, her ratings have been in a death spiral.

Contemptor – a media and culture website — founder Justin Baragona, who was previously a cable news watchdog for Mediaite, broke down Reid’s ratings for her shows that have aired since the controversy erupted. Baragona found that this past Saturday’s 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET hours of “AM Joy” finished last among major cable news networks in the key demo of adults age 25-54 – but questioned whether or not it was a “blip or a trend.” Baragona pointed out that Reid finished second among cable news rivals the previous Saturday when she delivered her quasi-apology for comments dug up by a Twitter user and published by Mediaite. The unearthed posts showed Reid wrote numerous offensive jokes and comments on her now defunct blog, “The Reid Report.”

There’s no doubt that if NBC News only has to stomach lousy ratings as fallout from the Reid controversy, they’ll weather the storm. After all, lousy ratings didn’t keep them from featuring Rev. Al Sharpton in their prime time line-up for several years. The social justice warrior/identity politics cache from having Sharpton or Reid in their stable far outweighs the loss of viewers in the short term.

However, NBC News will suffer major damage to their credibility as a news organization if they continue to pretend that Reid is not a pathological liar. Their brand is damaged as long as they continue to ignore the fact that she called the FBI to make a false charge of computer hacking to divert attention from her own behavior. Their journalistic bona fides will continue to be questioned as long as they pretend they didn’t circulate a bogus report from Reid’s cyber-security expert who appeared to misrepresent that Reid’s blog had been hacked without supplying any evidence to support the claim.

Joy Reid still has a job and NBC News is protecting her. Just like they protected Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin and Harvey Weinstein… until they couldn’t protect them any longer.

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