Melissa Harris-Perry won’t be back for her MSNBC show

In her email to her colleagues, Harris-Perry wrote, “Here is the reality: Our show was taken – without comment or discussion or notice – in the midst of an election season”.

Paul Farhi at The Washington Post reports: “MSNBC intends to part ways with host Melissa Harris-Perry after she complained about preemptions of her weekend program and implied that there was a racial aspect to the cable-news network’s treatment, insiders at MSNBC said”.

The hashtag #MSNBCSoWhite began trending, and many Twitter users reprimanded the network for what they interpreted as the attempt to “drown out diverse voices”.

Farewell #Nerdland, she tweeted on Sunday, referring to the probing discussions on her weekend show.

The Melissa Harris-Perry news and opinion TV show is over after four years.

Harris-Perry’s time on air has been reduced as MSNBC has pursued more coverage of the 2016 Presidential race. I could see an MHP news series on OWN – either a political talk-show, or even a documentary news series similar to what Soledad O’Brien has done for CNN; or maybe a combination of both. “I am not owned by [MSNBC Chairman Andy] Lack, [President Phil] Griffin, or MSNBC”. “I love our show, I want it back”. “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes”, she wrote.

On Friday, an MSNBC called Harris-Perry’s complaints “really surprising, confusing and disappointing”.

The announcement comes two days after Harris-Perry refused to host her weekend program, saying she felt “worthless” to the MSNBC executives. She isn’t the only anchor who has had to roll with editorial decision-making, but she suggested Friday in a memo that was posted on the social-media site Medium that MSNBC’s new focus had forced changes to her program that reduced its effectiveness and robbed it of its personality. “Some people are very happy she has been sidelined, but I think she deserved better than this”.

Her contract with MSNBC expires in October. And in response, NBC News insists that she’s essentially reading more into their actions beyond the obvious, as laid out in the quote above from an NBC News spokesperson.