Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Culture
CultureEntertainment

Melissa Harris-Perry Announces She’s Joining BET News After MSNBC Departure

Posted byBy Kiersten Willis | Published on: CommentsComments (0)
Twitter

Twitter

After Melissa Harris-Perry left her MSNBC show in March, the former weekend show host will begin a new position with BET News. The network announced on Twitter this morning that she will serve as the new special correspondent.

The political commentator also retweeted the news saying she was “thrilled to be in the family.”

Deadline reports Harris-Perry will host and contribute to several BET News programs and create long-form news programs for the network. The 42-year-old will be joined by Marc Lamont Hill, who has also found a home at BET and Viacom after his presence at mainstream news organizations CNN and The Huffington Post were diminished.

For her first assignment, Harris-Perry and Hill will co-anchor coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. An hour-long recap of election events will air July 24 at 11 a.m.

After leaving MSNBC, where she anchored the “Melissa Harris-Perry” program for four years, the Wake Forrest University professor spoke to Another Round podcast about her departure for the first time. She addressed her “little brown bobble head” phrase from an email she sent to her show staff – nicknamed Nerdland.

“I don’t think MSNBC had any intention of firing me,” she said in March. “And I think it’s pretty clear that if I had been willing to be an interchangeable anchor, willing to go on at any given hour and talk about whatever they wanted, then I could have kept my job. I was not willing to do that. So when I talk about being a ‘little brown bobble head,’ that’s what that role is.”

Harris-Perry also said at the time she did not want to return to cable television.

“I would love to have some kind of platform that allows me to bring and convene all those voices that I cared so much about in Nerdland,” she told the podcast. “But on cable TV, I don’t really want to go work for somebody again right now.”

The Elle.com editor-at-large is not the only Black newscaster who was forced out of mainstream media. Roland Martin was also pushed out of his position at CNN. The current NewsOne host accused the 24-hour news network of racism in 2013.

“You have largely white male executives who are not necessarily enamored with the idea of having strong confident minorities who say, ‘I can do this,’ ” Martin said at the time. “We deliver, but we never get the big piece, the larger salary – to be able to get from here to there.”

Still independent.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Related Stories

Back to top