MSNBC suspends journalist over Barack Obama insult

US cable news channel takes action after Mark Halperin calls US president 'kind of a dick'

Jason Deans
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 June 2011

A political journalist who said president Barack Obama was being "kind of a dick" live on air has been suspended by US cable news channel MSNBC.

Mark Halperin, a political analyst and editor-at-large for Time magazine, made the remark on MSNBC's Morning Joe programme on Thursday during a discussion about an Obama press conference the previous day.

Halperin asked the show's presenters jokingly: "Are we on the seven-second delay today? ... I want to characterise how I thought the president behaved."

The presenters appeared to encourage him to speak his mind and after apparent confusion between the studio and the show's production team in the gallery about whether a delay button was being used, Halperin said: "I thought he was kind of a dick yesterday."

This prompted a shocked reaction from the Morning Joe co-presenter Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman: "Oh my God ... delay that! Delay that! What are you doing? I can't believe you – I was joking!"

(Original here.)