“This has a bit of a dirty feel to it… These things happen and they don’t bounce around MSNBC all that much. Like people just don’t care,” Fox’s
MSNBC source said. “This one feels, I’d say, there’s a deeper disappointment. There’s a sense of like, ‘Ugh, we don’t need this. This feels kind of grifty and gross.'”
The same source alleged that the network gives Sharpton “a wide berth” and that Sharpton is “not held to the same journalistic standard.”
The source claimed that the scandal stinks of a “pay-to-play” scheme.
“There is a sense among the people I’ve spoken to that this feels like something wrong and that something should be done about it,” they told Fox. “I don’t know what that something is… That’s a lot of money! That’s not a small matter… It just doesn’t sit well with people.”
The source reportedly doubted that
Sharpton would face any ramifications.
“Generally speaking, people do things and they kind of get away with them at MSNBC, I mean, other than in the Me Too era,” the source told Fox.
The source also cast into doubt
Sharpton’s credibility as a journalist.
“That kind of money should not be changing hands to people who are cosplaying being a journalist. Maybe that’s not a fair term because I don’t know, is he a journalist? I don’t know. But that just feels a little bit like pay to play, and it doesn’t feel right in an organization that we’re all still part of,” the source told the outlet.