Business Part Of Life

Alec Baldwin’s new talk show, “Up Late,” premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on MSNBC, but if you watch a lot of television today, you’ll probably have seen the actor a few times already by that point, in his seemingly ubiquitous role as a spokesman for Capital One credit cards.
For a television news host to have a sideline as a bank pitchman is unorthodox in the extreme, even for a network like MSNBC, which has been blurring boundaries with great success over the last few years. While news organizations vary widely in their policies, cashing checks from a large corporate entity whose interests are a subject of daily coverage would be a no-no in pretty much any newsroom.
And MSNBC’s isn’t just any newsroom. Nominally, at least, it’s governed by the no-nonsense ethics policy of NBC News, although journalists at the parent network often mutter behind their hands at the cable channel’s lax enforcement of standards. At this point, the apple has rolled pretty far from the tree, but from time to time the NBC News rules still come into play, as when MSNBC president Phil Griffin invoked them in 2010 in suspending anchor Keith Olbermann, who had made unapproved donations to political campaigns. (Olbermann left the network several months later.)
I’d love to let Griffin explain why Baldwin seems to be getting a pass, but a string of emails to the network have gone mostly unanswered. All I got was this statement from a spokesperson: “Per our standards, Alec will disclose affiliations when appropriate.”
So I’ll speculate a little. For one thing, the policies don’t apply across the board. An MSNBC source says other on-air personalities have specific exemptions, such as the right to accept speaking fees, written into their contracts.
Baldwin has said he funnels all the money from his Capital One deal and any other endorsements he does to charity, with past recipients including the New York Philharmonic and NYU. A Baldwin spokesman confirms that is still the case. That explanation might not cut it at a place like The New York Times, but elsewhere it’s a mitigating factor.
There’s also the expected nature of Baldwin’s show. On his WNYC podcast series, “Here’s The Thing,” the actor mostly interviewed entertainers and figures from the world of the arts — areas where a financial relationship with a bank would pose no conflict of interest. He did occasionally interview policymakers, however, and one interview, with economist Joseph Stiglitz, was all about the financial collapse, the banking system and regulatory policy. That episode lacked any sort of disclosure that the host was himself a spokesman for a financial institution.
Will MSNBC be as laissez-faire, if and when the discussion on “Up Late” turns to financial matters? Or has Griffin warned Baldwin to stay away from those subjects, as he asked him to modulate his tone on Twitter? I guess we’ll have to watch to find out.

source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/10/11/msnbc-sees-0-conflict-of-interests-in-alec-baldwins-capital-one-gig/#22af30