Honestly he should lose his job. Firing him is the only way I can see MSNBC being able to even try to claim credibility after this incident.
Devil's advocate. He did say the story was weakly sourced. Not quite the same thing as made up. There could still be a lot of truth to it. But still, massively unprofessional.
Maybe I was a little harsh in my judgment.
Maybe not.
Some time ago Rachel Maddow came out on her show and said that someone approached her show with a bogus news story that was damaging to Trump, and her research team decided it wasn't worth pursuing. The gist was that her show wasn't going to just run with any anti-Trump story it came across; there had to be some reason to trust the validity of the story in order for them to take it seriously.
It's too bad her buddy Lawrence couldn't show the same restraint, because whether that's literally what's happened here or not, it certainly looks like that's what happened here. He should have realized that himself, just based on that careful way he framed the story that you referenced. But his hatred for Trump blinded him to the fact that this would not end up looking good for his show or for MSNBC.
I firmly believe that the media should be highlighting every single flaw in this administration, and I have no problem with a pundit being biased against Trump since any sane person should be. When the New York Times or the Washington Post reports a story, you can generally trust that it has been thoroughly vetted, because journalistic integrity means something to them and it's not something they're willing to sacrifice for shock value.
Now we see that that is not the case with at least one of MSNBC's prime-time commentators. If MSNBC wants to be treated like it has integrity how can they possibly keep him on their payroll?
I guess it comes down to, is MSNBC truly the liberal mirror image of Fox, as it often seems to be, or do they still care about making sure they're reporting the truth, as they generally still seem to?
I might be making more of this than I should, but I feel like this is a disaster for MSNBC and they need to do something drastic to put out the fire O'donnell started. Firing him seems like the most sensible option.