But he's not lying when he says that whatever money he was being offered to stick around was almost certainly a hell of a lot more than he gets being an internet superstar. Uygur goes on to say that at one point Griffin warned him that while he was content to rail against the establishment, MSNBC in fact is the establishment, and that that had to be kept in mind at all times. And I think a lot of individual journalists find ways to do that.
– The deal isn't official yet, but the New York Times and Los Angeles Times say Al Sharpton is all but certain to get his own show at 6pm EST on MSNBC. It doesn't come without a dose of drama, though. Sharpton won the job over the outspoken Cenk Uygur, who left the network and accused its top brass of caving to the pressure of "people in Washington" who wanted him to tone down his criticism. (Uygur gives his version on his online Young Turks show, and the lengthy video is at left.) Not so, says MSNBC's Phil Griffin: “We never told Cenk what to say or what not to say." It wasn't politicians who complained but the network's own producers, who said it was getting hard to book guests because of Uygur's combative style. The right-wing Blaze loved the whole story, asking, "Is the White House programming a news channel?" The White House promptly denied the charge as ridiculous to Mediaite. For more on the Uygur controversy, see Salon or the Huffington Post.