MSNBC‘s newest guest isn’t known for stirring primetime oratory or deep analytical skills — but could be a big help in keeping those things on the network’s schedule.
A new promo from the soon-to-be-spun-off cable-news outlet features a reading of the First Amendment via voice-overs from Rachel Maddow, Ari Melber, Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell. A core tenet of the Constitution of the United States, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, as well as the right to petition the government. MSNBC is taking them up at a moment when there is growing concern among certain sectors in the U.S. that an overreaching Trump White House might seek to erode such things in weeks to come.
MSNBC, which for years has run promos that show anchors in key on-screen moments alongside the slogan “This Is Who We Are,” clearly wants freedom of speech to be remembered as one of those elements. “The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy and serves as a constant inspiration for the work our journalists do at MSNBC,” says Maritza Berta, vice president of marketing for MSNBC, in a statement. Using the words of the First Amendment,, she says, allows to reinforce its image as “a trusted source for in-depth understanding and always provide the context necessary to fully grasp the news of the day. This is exactly what our anchors do every day — deliver news with unwavering rigor, accuracy, and truth.”
The promo includes shots of many of the opinion-show personalities that make up the bulk of the progressive network’s new weekday schedule, which is slated to debut in the next few weeks. Maddow, Psaki, Melber and O’Donnell are seen, along with Joe Scarborough; Mika Brzezinski; Willie Geist; Jonathan Lemiere; Symone Sanders Townsend; Michael Steele; Alicia Menendez; Ali Vitali; Stephanie Ruhle; Chris Hayes; and Nicolle Wallace. Anchors of the network’s weekday news hours — Ana Cabrera, Katy Tur and Chris Jansing — are not featured, but additional versions of the promo featuring different personnel are scheduled to debut in days to come.
The vignette ends with graphics telling viewers “This Is What We Do” and “This Is Who We Are.”
The promo is MSNBC’s first under the leadership of new president Rebecca Kutler, who has moved quickly to recalibrate talent lineups across weekdays and weekends after the network suffered dips in viewership following the results of the 2024 presidential election. Maddow, who has returned to five-days-a-week for the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, has helped bring viewership back following Trump’s inauguration in January. Fox News Channel continues to win the bulk of viewers who are staying with cable news in a time when an increasing number people are getting information from new-tech outlets, including Substack, TikTok and YouTube.
Kutler has begun hiring new staffers with traditional journalism backgrounds from outlets including The Washington Post and Politico, and intends to staff up a new Washington bureau with 100 journalists, producers and other staff. Such ventures would benefit from the First Amendment, which holds that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“
MSNBC may be seen as taking a stance similar to the positioning embraced by CNN during Trump’s first White House cycle. In 2017, CNN rolled out a series of promos that brandished the slogan “Facts First” as Trump and his top officials often spread disinformation about mainstream press outlets and critics.
One of the promos showed a stark picture of an apple on the screen. “This is an apple,” said a narrator. “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana. They might scream ‘Banana. Banana. Banana.’ over and over and over again. They might put ‘banana’ in all caps. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not,” the voice counseled. “This is an apple.”
Kutler worked at CNN for more than a decade, launching new programs led by John King, Van Jones and many others, rising, eventually, to senior vice president overseeing programming for the scuttled streaming outlet CNN+.
While many top news outlets brandished slogans supporting press freedom during Trump’s first term in office — The Washington Post used “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and The New York Times relied on “The Truth is Hard” — such efforts have been scarce so far. Disney’s ABC News said it would pay out a $15 million settlement to end a defamation suit filed against it by President Trump and Paramount Global’s CBS News is in the midst of a legal battle with Trump over a “60 Minutes” broadcast from last year. President Trump has at various moments and in social-media posts castigated NBC News, CNN, MSNBC and others.
MSNBC’s viewership may want to see the network push back. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, has found himself under a microscope since voting to keep the government open rather than causing a shutdown. And viewers seemed outraged in November after MSNBC morning stars Scarborough and Brzezinski relayed how they went to visit Trump following the 2024 election after sparring with him for years.
Kutler’s efforts come while MSNBC grapples with being a progressive monitor of an era when conservative politics hold considerable sway and as NBCUniversal parent Comcast prepares spin off the bulk of its cable networks into a new publicly-traded entity, sundering its long-held ties with NBC News.
