MSNBC

In a speech at Kansas State University Banfield speaks out on how the cable news networks coverage of the Iraq and Afghan war is “sanitized” and one sided. The comment that probably got her in the most trouble was when she said “some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic”. This comment at a time when MSNBC was trying to re-brand it’s self by firing the anti-war Phil Donahue and replacing him with chicken hawks like Joe Scarborough and Mike Savage in an attempt to catch up on viewer ship of Fox News.

For the remainder of Banfield’s contract with MSNBC they sidelined her. Banfield said in an article years later: “I was office-less for ten months, No phone, no computer. For ten months I had to report to work every day and ask where I could sit. If somebody was away I could use their desk. Eventually, after ten months of this, I was given an office that was a tape closet. They cleared the tapes out and put a desk and a TV in there, and a computer and phone. It was pretty blatant. The message was crystal clear. Yet they wouldn’t let me leave. I begged for seventeen months to be let out of my contract. If they had no use for me, let’s just part ways amicably - no need for payouts, just a clean break. And Neal wouldn’t allow it. I don’t know what his rationale was - perhaps he thought I would take what I felt was a very strong brand, and others felt was a very strong brand, to another network and make a success of it. Maybe that’s why he chose to keep me in a warehouse. I will never forgive him for his cruelty and the manner in which he decided to dispose of me”.