How can you defend MSNBC for being anything other than left-leaning?
It’s not always as progressive as American progressives would like it to be, but not being progressive≠ not left leaning.
It’s not always as progressive as American progressives would like it to be, but not being progressive≠ not left leaning.
This is unfortunately a consequence of the two party system in the States. We equate Democrats with Left and Republicans with Right. Anything supportive of Democrats gets labeled "left" even if the policies are really centrist, pro capital ones. Because we don't really have the language here to differentiate the Left and Democrats in mainstream American parlance.
I think your perspective is more radical than you realize. You sound like a revolutionary to me, not a progressive.
You can like some aspect of capitalism and think some industry/market should be protected from it (like inherently monopolistic markets?)
Compare the difference between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. Warren and Biden fundamentally believe that capitalism is good and the natural law of the land. Sanders does not. Warren believes that we need to do more to address inequality between the owners and the workers, Biden does not.
I would (personally) consider Bernie to be Leftist, Warren to be Left Leaning, and Biden to be Centrist.
None of them I would consider to be revolutionary left. I've met plenty of tankies who believe in an authoritarian left seized through violence. (I am not one.)
There are fundamentally, multiple axises upon which you can measure political policy, views, goals, parties, etc. A few examples of widely understood ones being “progressive/conservative”, “authoritarian/libertarian”, “collectivist/anarchist”, and some even cover similar things such as “socialist/capitalist” which has philosophical overlap “collectivist/individualist” but is not the same, being obviously more focused on the economic structures than basic political philosophies of collectivism vs individualism.
All of this is to say that boiling politics down to a simplistic “left/right” spectrum does nothing but confuse the issues.
That said, and I'm curious if you'd agree, I don't think that means that we cannot observe that MSNBC is left-biased. Both in a relative (definitely) and absolute sense. That said, if we are going to use such a reductive spectrum, we do lose a huge amount of important details that may keep individuals from agreeing with my perspective.
Effectively I could agree with a characterisation of MSNBC as “left” if you want to define “left” as just “progressive”. Which feels like an oversimplification that hides the fact that when you look critically at the situation that broadly speaking news in the USA is tailored to instil fear as a mechanism to keep people watching because seeking information (to ensure our safety) on things our brain finds threatening is a basic human instinct that happens at a subconscious level. Effectively the only difference between the 24/7 news channels is what they think you’re afraid of.