060724_Faust_VL.widec

It’s official: David Shuster is in very bad odor at MSNBC. From Mediaite, quoting an email from Phil Griffin, Shuster’s boss, to a member of the public:

From: Griffin, Phil (NBC Universal)

Sent: Wed 4/07/10 11:16 PM

Sorry, but this is a business and I need team players. He was not moral, ethical or professional and that is not fair to the 500 people who work at msnbc.

Thanks for your note,

Phil

That’s probably it for our friend Dave, at least as far as his MSNBC career is concerned. His crime, reportedly, was taping a pilot for failing rival CNN, which would have brought him full circle on his tour through the cable-news jungles. After starting in the CNN Washington bureau, he moved on to Fox News, where he covered both the Clinton impeachment (Shuster had done some time himself in Little Rock, as a correspondent for KATV there, so he knew the territory) and the attacks of Sept. 11.

But then came the fateful bargain with MSNBC –

– and a guy who had been, if memory serves, a perfectly rational and reasonable reporter turned into a screaming nut case, as in this memorable exchange with Andrew Breitbart, which as things turned out, was the beginning of the end. He took the bait that Breitbart offered, and effectively destroyed his own career:


No good can ever come of working for MSNBC (just ask Dan Abrams, Mediaite’s boss).  The insanity of the place corrodes everyone’s mind and soul, encouraging them to spew forth their bitterness and hatred and rage in the hopes of fleeting celebrity and phantom ratings.  It’s a Faustian bargain and one that ends pretty much the same way as it did for Goethe’s tragic hero.

Alas, poor David.  Now, like Faust, you can say:

I may not pretend, aught rightly to know,

I may not pretend, through teaching, to find

A means to improve or convert mankind.

Then I have neither goods nor treasure,

No worldly honour, rank, or pleasure;

No dog in such fashion would longer live!

Therefore myself to magic I give,

In hope, through spirit-voice and might,

Secrets now veiled to bring to light,

That I no more, with aching brow,

Need speak of what I nothing know…


A lesson for aspiring TV newsers everywhere.