Ratings and rundown, both don’t seem to be agreeing with MSNBC’s Leftist-Islamist TV presenter Mehdi Hasan. The left-leaning American news channel has decided to take Hasan’s weekend show off air including from the streaming service Peacock.
Mehdi Hasan will now be able to spew his ‘kafirphobic’ rhetoric only as an on-camera analyst and fill-in host. While the decision is being reported as part of a major shakeup in MSNBC’s programming schedule, “The Mehdi Hasan Show” was the one that got the axe owing to low ratings.
Mehdi Hasan is being replaced by Ayman Mohyeldin for the one-hour-long Sunday programme. Reports citing sources claim that the show and even the channel altogether has witnessed a sharp drop in ratings.
Reports claim that the MSNBC is “cutting costs like crazy” and that this was a “good excuse” to remove the British-born anchor’s face off of its screens.
“I think they thought (Hasan’s) point of view was a little too out of the mainstream if you know what I mean,” The New York Post cited a source.
Mehdi Hasan, who is famously and outrightly anti-Hindu and anti-India, has been toeing the pro-Hamas line in his coverage of Israel-Hamas war.
Hasan has falsely accused the Israeli forces of bombing the ah-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza and compared Israel’s crackdown on terrorist group Hamas to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hasan is known to corner his panellists who do not agree with him and his views and does not shy away from peddling his former employer, Al Jazeera’s narrative, even as he works for the American channel MSNBC.
This fact perhaps dawned on the channel only when the ratings dipped abysmally low particularly after the 7th October attack by Hamas terrorists against Israel.
According to Semafor, which first reported the development, Hasan’s on-air dramatics and holier-than-thou theatrics “never translated into ratings successes on the weekend or during fill-in appearances on primetime shows”.
The New York Post reported that Hasan’s ratings have been “steadily declining over the past two months” according to ratings agency Nielsen. He reportedly averaged 617,000 viewers for his show on 1st October, six days before the terrorist attack on Israel.
Since then, “The Mehdi Hasan Show” has failed to achieve more than 500,000 viewers. On 12th November, the viewership hit an all time low with a mere 37,000 viewers in the 24-54 demography and 411,000 total.
MSNBC has no one but the Hamas apologist to thank for giving the CNN and Fox News an edge. Notably, the development comes before the 2024 US Presidential elections.
Meanwhile, MSNBC boss Rashida Jones said that the decision was part of a revamp plan ahead of the 2024 elections. “As Decision 2024 ramps up, the show will provide thoughtful analysis and coverage on the state of our country from three trusted voices familiar to the MSNBC audience,” Jones said.
The new weekend line-up at MSNBC will include a two-hour morning show called “The Weekend” which will feature former Biden-aide Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele.
Moreover, reports claim that after the 7th October attack by Hamas on Israel, MSNBC has “quietly taken three of its Muslim broadcasters out of the anhors chair”. These include Mehdi Hasan, Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi. However, the channel has denied the charge.
Mehdi Hasan’s Islamist record
The TV presenter, who is of Indian descent, joined MSNBC in 2020 after working for Al Jazeera and The Intercept. Recently, a video from 2009 went viral once again on social media showing Hasan referring to non-Muslims as ‘animals’ and likening homosexuals to ‘paedophiles’.
He was heard saying, “Once we lose the moral high ground we are no different from the rest, of the non-Muslims, from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfill any desire.”
Hasan had apologised for his remarks in the video in 2019 but he continues to demonise Hindus, India and anything related to the two.
In April 2022, the MSNBC anchor went on a tirade against PM Modi and cast aspersions on India’s secularism.
He equated Hindu Nationalism in India (a nation that was divided on religious lines) with white Supremacy in the West, which is an ideology based on race. His sinister agenda was to equate Hindutva with Anti-Semitism.
Mehdi Hasan had also been involved in gaslighting Hindus by suggesting that he differentiates between the good and bad ones – a classical troupe used by Hinduphobes who claim ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva’ are different. In reality, they do not make any such distinction.
In April this year, Hasan faced accusations of plagiarism in connection with an article he authored endorsing the idea of parents resorting to physical discipline for their children.
Lee Fang, an investigative journalist with The Intercept, accusing Hasan of “passing off others” reporting as his own, at times without any citation at all.
