
Joy Reid Says She Was Paid 10% Of What Some MSNBC Hosts Earned, Despite Having Higher Ratings
Joy Reid is opening up about pay disparities during her time at #MSNBC.
Speaking at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival’s C-Suite Soirée earlier this month, Reid shared, “I worked in a business where I was paid a tenth of the salary of people who did literally my same job, the whole time I worked there. And we knew that any man that was doing what I was doing was going to make more than me. And that they were going to be able to negotiate higher salaries, even at lower ratings.”
Reid called this the “curse of competency,” explaining, “You know more than everyone else because you’ve had to do more work and more research to get where you are, and so therefore you’re the one everybody calls. Which means that because you are the best at it, you actually work the hardest, do the most hours, work the most overtime, and don’t get paid commensurate to the amount of work you do.”
She added that her male, non-Black counterparts rarely face the same challenges: “They get the sort of presumption of brilliance. The Elon Musk presumption, where people are like ‘You look like a genius, you must be a genius.’ But they’re not. They work fewer hours and make more than us, get bigger raises, more opportunities and more grace. This is the world we live in.”
Reid’s MSNBC show, The Reid Out, reportedly earned her $3 million per year before a 2024 pay cut as part of the network’s cost-saving efforts. She was let go in February.
Reid immediately hosts The Joy Reid Show daily on YouTube.
Thoughts?
[VIA]