There is no joy at 30 Rock.
Via The Daily Beast:
MSNBC and Joy Reid on Friday both finally commented on the latest round of hateful old blog posts unearthed by various outlets. They did not, however, address Reid’s initial and unsubstantiated claim that the posts were fake.
And more than a month after the controversy began, many of Reid’s MSNBC colleagues are embarrassed by the network’s handling of it.
In late April, when decade-old homophobic posts from her blog first emerged, Reid claimed the FBI had opened an investigation and that she had a cyber-security consultant with proof her old blog was hacked to fabricate those posts.
The claim crumbled under scrutiny, The Daily Beast found. But neither Reid nor MSNBC have commented on whether they stand by the hacking claim; or whether the supposed FBI probe is still ongoing. […]
The network‘s failure to address that dubious hacking claim has irked some inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Several employees who spoke to The Daily Beast—on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize their employment—said they were largely unimpressed with the statements, noting that many questions remain conspicuously unanswered.
“Everyone in the building is laughing at the idea that it was a hacker,” one MSNBC staffer told The Daily Beast.
“It’s just a joke,” said another employee.
According to several NBC insiders, however, some staffers on Reid’s show believed she was hacked—a sentiment shared by several of her friends in the media who first defended her in April.
Other staffers who spoke with The Daily Beast expressed a growing sense of alarm about how this ongoing saga may damage MSNBC’s reputation as a news outlet.