The conservative Washington Free Beacon had a field day with a new ad from MSNBC promoting its impending transformation into “MS NOW” that featured the liberal network’s White stars as well as several Black Actors.
“A slick new civil rights-themed video promoting MSNBC’s forced name change to “MS NOW” features paid black actors playing ordinary Americans, intercut with pensive shots of MSNBC’s white primetime stars. The promotional spot, narrated by Rachel Maddow reading the Constitution, appears to be a ham-handed effort by MSNBC’s new parent company, Versant, to cater to MSNBC’s large black audience—the largest in cable news—when its primetime and morning anchor lineup is overwhelmingly white,” led the Beacon’s Collin Anderson and Thaleigha Rampersad before diving into the heart of the matter:
It uses archival protest footage, video of Martin Luther King Jr., and Maddow’s patriotic narration to portray MS NOW as a beacon of racial and social justice. It also extensively uses black actors without identifying them as paid performers, a Washington Free Beacon review found. The actors, Alex Mason, Shekaya Sky McCarthy, and Marcel Noel, stare off into the distance as Maddow speaks of forming “a more perfect union.” Mason is shown by himself, while McCarthy is pictured next to a black child, and Noel plays a coffee-drinking patron at a diner.
It’s just another day on set for Mason, a veteran commercial actor who has starred in spots for the likes of ZipRecruiter, KFC, Target, and Intuitive Surgical, where he played a “surgeon in training.” McCarthy, judging by her IMDB page, is more of a comedic actress, having earned credits for playing “Serenity” in the YouTube series “Sad-Ass Black Folk” and “Girl at Audition #2” in the Keke Palmer mockumentary-style series “That’s The Gag.” Noel, who hails from Canada, is also a veteran commercial actor featured in ads for insurance giant Allstate, underwear brand Saxx, and Prince George, British Columbia’s tourism department.
The spot also features a black woman in military uniform embracing her child. They appear to be actors as well, although the Free Beacon could not identify them.
They went on to note that the vast majority of the MSNBC talent to appear in the ad was White, with the exceptions being Michael Steele and Symone Sanders.
For her part, Maddow criticized her own network after it let Joy Reid go earlier this February.
“I love everything about her [Reid]. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call and I understand that. But that’s what I think,” said Maddow at the time. “I will tell you. It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two – count them – two nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.”
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