Joy Reid Is No Longer Filtered—And That's Exactly The Point
The legendary journalist has officially entered the independent media game with her latest venture, The Joy Reid Show, where viewers will experience the rawest Reid has been in her career.
Joy Reid and I initially bonded over our credence for Gwen Ifill, the late legendary journalist who hosted PBS NewsHour. I grew up watching Ifill—my father would tune in to PBS 13 New York after my daylong Nickelodeon binge. Reid often cites Ifill as one of her greatest influences.
'When we saw Gwen, we were like, 'Ooh, stop the presses—we're going to watch her and we're going to hear what she has to say,' Reid recalled. 'When she moderated that debate—so proud. That was a legendary moment.'
Ifill made history in 1999 as the first African-American woman to host a major political talk show on national television with PBS' Washington Week. A pioneering milestone that sprung the doors for a new generation of Black women in journalism—including Joy Reid, who would break a respective milestone two decades later.
MEET THE PRESS — Pictured: Joy Reid Host, MSNBC?s ?AM Joy?; MSNBC Political Analyst, appears on ... More "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017. (Photo by: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
In 2020, Reid made history as the first Black woman to anchor a primetime cable news show with The ReidOut, airing weeknights at 7pm EST on MSNBC. Prior, Reid hosted AM Joy, a fiery weekend staple known for its raw political rhetoric. The ReidOut filled the coveted time slot previously held by Chris Matthews' Hardball—a transition that came amid Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, the COVID-19 pandemic, and nationwide uprisings for racial justice with the murder of George Floyd. MSNBC needed a voice rooted in rigor and cultural fluency. And, Reid was that voice.
2022 MSNBC ELECTION COVERAGE — 2022 Midterms Election Coverage — Pictured: (l-r) Chris Hayes, Joy ... More Reid, Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Ari Melber in Studio 3A at Rockefeller Center on Tuesday, November 8, 2022 — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/MSNBC via Getty Images)
There is often a challenge faced by Black journalists upon entering legacy newsrooms: being misinterpreted as 'too opinionated' or pigeonholed as a 'race reporter.' Yet this lens, often dismissed as niche, is in fact essential to the American narrative. And Joy Reid is uniquely equipped to deliver it. Born in Brooklyn to a Congolese geologist father and a Guyanese nutritionist-turned-professor mother, Reid was raised primarily by her mother. Her insights into global Black identity are not performative. They're personal.
'Inside my mother's house, it was Guyana—Guyana rules, Guyana discipline,' she told me. 'But she understood she was raising African-American kids. So we were both.' That duality has always shaped her journalism. 'I'm able to look at the United States the way the world looks at the United States,' she said. Her international lens sharpened during a scholarship trip through Europe, where she and her sister were frequently mistaken for African. 'They didn't believe African-American teenagers could possibly afford to travel outside the U.S.,' she recalled. 'People had this warped perception of African-Americans. And we learned that by leaving the United States.'
It's that lived complexity of being Black, American, Caribbean, and woman that underpins Reid's voice. Her journalistic beat isn't race. It's truth, viewed through a lens shaped by heritage, history, and hard-won clarity.
The pursuit of journalism was not just an opportunity for Reid. She saw journalism as an outlet for advocacy—hence her overall defined journalistic beat in global political affairs like the war on Iraq and Bush, contextualizing voter suppression, or objectively critiquing Trumpism and autocracy. Reid has long been critical of the mainstream media's reliance on 'both-sideism,' especially when it gives extremism an unearned platform. I asked her how journalists should recalibrate objectivity in an era where one—or both—sides can be actively hostile to fact-based truth.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Joy Reid of MSNBC is host of The ReidOut is photographed at the NBC ... More television station in Washington, DC on January 20, 2022. (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Reid is Ivy-League–educated, having earned a bachelor of arts degree in Film Studies from Harvard. She thanks affirmative action, which was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2023, for her entry into Harvard, citing an understanding of her presence's valuable contribution to the Ivy-League campus.
Since she took on positions in journalism—starting with a role at WSVN in Florida, co-hosting the Wake Up South Florida show, worked on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, becoming managing editor at The Grio for three years im 2011, and serving a longtime role as a columnist for The Miami Herald—all while running her blog The Reid Report until her first MSNBC gig in 2014, where her blog transformed into an afternoon news slot on the network. It lasted one year until she landed AM Joy and later the history-making, The ReidOut.
NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 09: Journalist Joy Reid speaks during the Apple Store Soho Presents: Apple ... More Store Soho Presents:Meet the Creator: John Ridley, "American Crime" at the Apple Store Soho on February 9, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by J. Countess/Getty Images)
In February, the world of political media was shaken when Reid was fired from her historic anchor gig for MSNBC, concluding the broadcast of her show The ReidOut. The cancellation was a result of a grand reprogramming overhaul by the newly appointed network president Rebecca Kutler.
Reid told me that to this day, she hasn't been given a clear reason for her dismissal from MSNBC. 'It was not ratings,' she explained. 'We were competitive. Everyone was down after the 2024 election—except Fox.' While the network never offered a direct explanation, she believes it may have stemmed from her frank commentary on Trump and Gaza.
'I get it,' she said. 'These media companies—I don't own them. They can choose who they put on their air.' Rather than dwell on the decision, Reid is focused on what she built while she was there. What she misses most is her team. 'I loved my ReidOut team and my coworkers,' she said.
Her main critique isn't about her own firing—it's about how MSNBC handled the aftermath. 'I've never known MSNBC to devastate the staff when they take out a host,' she noted. 'I had three shows there. Even when one was canceled or I left to take another, no staff was ever moved or laid off.' She echoed Rachel Maddow's public disapproval of how it was handled, calling it 'divisive' and 'damaging to the joy people had in working there.'
Here's the beautiful thing: Joy Reid is now operating in true journalistic freedom. No corporate optics. No editorial gatekeepers. While she's always been unapologetic, we're now witnessing her at her rawest—and most liberated. In May, she made her independent media debut on YouTube with The Joy Reid Show, where 'Reiders' get daily breakdowns of news, politics, and culture with unfiltered clarity.
Reid's YouTube channel hit the 100k subscriber milestone last week—a sign that not only did Reid carry her dedicated audience along her independent journey, but she remains a authoritative voice in American media.
'I was pretty unapologetic,' Reid told me. 'And it's probably why I don't work in corporate media anymore... There are limits placed on you just by the structure of what it is.' She explained that traditional newsrooms, bound by legal departments, government scrutiny, and internal policies, often force journalists to speak through layers of caution. 'But now,' she added, 'I'm regulated by my viewers—the people who choose to subscribe. That is who my bosses are. That's the only boss I have other than myself.'
That shift from institutional control to community accountability isn't just liberating. It's revolutionary. Reid has also reprised her Substack, where Reiders can retrieve in-depth narratives of modern happenings and exclusive interviews with cultural figures from Ava DuVernay to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Reid joins the likes of Don Lemon, Katie Couric and Mehdi Hasan who have gone on to launch their own media platforms post their unique departures from corporate media. That shift from institutional control to community accountability isn't just liberating. It's revolutionary.
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'He had a real opportunity to build on the bipartisan effort to reign in corporate power, but instead he's greenlighting multi-billion dollar deals, fighting culture wars, and hollowing out the agency.' Ferguson declined multiple requests for an interview. Bloomberg spoke with more than two dozen government officials, outside lawyers and other people who know the chairman for this story, and both friends and professional adversaries described him as a brilliant lawyer and a savvy political operator with far-reaching ambition. His resume has the hallmarks of a candidate for a judicial appointment. Ferguson has mused privately that he could be qualified for a seat on the federal bench and possibly even the Supreme Court someday, according to people who heard the remarks and asked not to be identified because the conversations were private. FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson said Ferguson is focused on his work at the FTC. 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That would would leave Ferguson and Mark Meador alone on the commission. Historically, antitrust enforcers at the FTC and at the Department of Justice have viewed themselves akin to umpires, apolitically calling balls and strikes on mergers and other corporate conduct. That began to shift at the DOJ during the first Trump administration, then gained steam at the FTC under Khan, with both agencies using their powers to further presidential priorities. Ferguson has criticized Khan for overreaching. At the same time, he's continuing her focus on the tech industry and on labor market abuses that, he agrees, hurt workers. He has also distanced himself from prior Republican administrations. A muscular FTC is here to stay, he reportedly said at a closed-door meeting with corporate executives this spring: 'I want to be really clear about something: This isn't the Bush administration." Raised in rural Virginia, Ferguson majored in history, then got his law degree, at the University of Virginia. In 2016, he went to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a stint that he has said cemented his relationship with one of the country's most stalwart conservatives. It also persuaded Ferguson, who is firmly pro-life and in 2022 converted to Catholicism, that the best way to overturn Roe vs. Wade was to put more like-minded judges on the federal bench. It also funneled him quickly into roles on Capitol Hill, first with the Senate Judiciary Committee then as a top aide to former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He led work that focused the body's attention on confirming Trump-picked judges, and in 2021, McConnell praised his 'stunningly outsized imprint' on the judiciary. Ferguson, he said, had been 'indispensable' to the Supreme Court confirmations of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, as well as dozens of lower-court appointees. 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By focusing attention on the alleged ad boycotts and leaving the underlying businesses untouched, the terms appealed to the MAGA faithful and corporate interests. The Omnicom settlement however also engendered criticism from some government officials, including Republicans, who have privately cast the settlement as a shakedown and as a violation of the First Amendment, according to people who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly. Simonson, the FTC spokesperson, strongly rejected both claims, saying that the agency 'works for the American people' and pointing to Ferguson's statement at the time which cited a Republican congressional investigation into coordinated conduct in the advertising industry. Thriving in the Trump administration can be precarious business. 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Trump pulled the rug out from his base Saturday evening when he released a lengthy social media post that completely dismissed the importance of the issue that has consumed the right for the past week — and longer. 'For years, it's Epstein, over and over again,' Trump posted on Truth Social, blaming the files on Democrats. 'Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden administration.' Trump's supporters have gone along with him through every scandal and policy shift. When he made a decision, his base backed him. But the Epstein issue is challenging this alliance like never before. This week, the Justice Department said it would not release any additional files related to the case of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died in 2019 while in custody, and a medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. He was facing sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. 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There was no escaping the topic of the Epstein files this weekend in Tampa, with many attendees and speakers calling for Bondi to be fired — even as Trump sent the clear message that he wants his supporters to move on. 'It's not even about Pam Bondi to me. It's like, look, Trump, we elected you because you were supposed to be different,' said Sharon Allen, a 24-year-old attendee. 'So you have to prove to us you're different….you can fire her [Bondi], do whatever, but at the end of the day, Trump, you are president. We trusted you to get rid of these people and expose these people.' Former Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who was among Trump's biggest supporters when in the state Legislature and was in attendance at the event, called Trump's Truth Social post "out of touch." "Trump is losing his touch," Sabatini said. "Bad personnel are undermining him left and right. We need a full reset." Trump's message on Truth Social also defended Bondi. Summit attendees almost universally sided with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, both of whom, NBC News and other outlets reported, were frustrated with Bondi's handling of the Epstein documents. Bongino and Patel used their considerable conservative media platforms prior to joining the Trump administration to amplify the idea that the Epstein case was part of a government-orchestrated cover-up to protect powerful political players. "What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals?'" Trump wrote Saturday evening. "They are all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!" But it's not clear that Trump's post will be enough to quell the furor. On the main stage Friday night at the Student Action Summit Megyn Kelly, a high-profile conservative commentator and Trump supporter, asked crowd a simple question: Bondi or Bongino? 'Bongino!' the crowd screamed in unison Friday night. 'It's 7,000 to 0,' responded Charlie Kirk, prominent conservative activist and head of Turning Points USA, who was the master of ceremonies for the weekend. Trump's post came after a day of attempts by the White House to tamp down simmering rage from the base. Patel posted Saturday on X that rumors of him considering resignation were 'conspiracy theories.' The White House also issued a statement Friday saying all the players involved continue to have Trump's support. 'President Trump has assembled a highly qualified and experienced law and order team dedicated to protecting Americans, holding criminals accountable, and delivering justice to victims,' White House spokesman Harrison Fields said. 'This work is being carried out seamlessly and with unity. Any attempt to sow division within this team is baseless and distracts from the real progress being made in restoring public safety and pursuing justice for all.' These attempts did little to lower the temperature in Tampa. 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Every single client involved should have an FBI agent at their door going after them the same way they went after the Jan. 6ers,' Jack Psobiec, a vocal Trump online supporter, told the conference Saturday afternoon. 'That's how we should go after everyone on the Epstein client list.' This article was originally published on
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