The Hollywood Reporter details how Jesse Watters, the gutsy producer for Fox News, infiltrated into the GE shareholders meeting, to bravely ask about the left-wing bias at MSNBC and other GE-NBC media properties.
"The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt," one attendee said to THR's Paul Bond. "Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it."
Here's more:
"My biggest surprise was the open hostility to MSNBC," said Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund and a four-year critic of Immelt. "It was noticeable and loud. I don't remember any of this going on last year."
"Any time MSNBC was mentioned, there was a rumbling in the crowd of 400 people," he added. Borelli also asked a question pertaining to GE's stock performance since Immelt took the helm.
The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was described by all four of the attendees THR talked to subsequently as variously rancorous or critical. Other than questions about MSNBC, shareholders brought up questions about executive pay and cuts to the company's dividend.
Needless to say, GE chiefs don't like being dressed down in public. But don't look for them to change their ways--they are bought and paid for, literally, by the government, in the form of all those bailouts. And they know that they need more. So expect to see more of Janeane Garofalo and all the rest of 'em on MSNBC.
So some sort of boycott, beyond MSNBC, is inevitable.
