BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith offered a subtle jab at “Morning Joe” on Friday, telling the show’s hosts and guests that nobody would watch them if we lived in “normal” times.
“In a normal country, nobody watches this show,” he said. “Sorry folks.”
Smith was on set to plug his latest piece, where he attacked “insider political journalism” that he said he was partially responsible for creating during his time at Politico. His remarks about “Morning Joe” came specifically when Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire drew attention to a conversation Smith said he had with a Brazilian editor about politics.
“A Brazilian editor once told me that you could tell his country was in political crisis because everyone was talking about politics all the time. In a normal country, nobody cares about politics,” he wrote in the piece.
“And I think that most of all, the political journalism of that crisis is no longer a special genre of journalism, but instead the core of the profession: getting to the truth, explaining the world, and often telling stories with a clear right and wrong.”
Smith — who responsible for breaking the John Edwards $400 haircut story — said that insider journalism epitomized by sports metaphors had become an anachronism in this “new era.”
“The game changer, the horse race, the Hail Mary — apt, perhaps, for the party politics of the 1990s and 2000s — are painfully inadequate for the movement politics of a new era, with higher stakes, higher passions, and far wider interest,” he wrote.
Smith has served as BuzzFeed’s top editor since December 2011.