Claim: MSNBC TV host Rachel Maddow launched her own newsroom in the summer of 2025, and CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert and former MSNBC host Joy Reid joined her new venture.

Back to work: Rachel Maddow returning to MSNBC five nights a week – NBC New York

A rumor that circulated online in August 2025 claimed MSNBC TV host Rachel Maddow launched her own newsroom in the summer of 2025, and that fellow U.S. progressive voices including CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert and former MSNBC host Joy Reid joined her new venture.

This matter circulated in the weeks following CBS’ announcement of its cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” — scheduled to end in May 2026 — and months after MSNBC abruptly ended Reid’s show.

As one example of users sharing the rumor, on Aug. 20, a manager of a Facebook page posted a brief video showing still images of Maddow and Colbert. The post — receiving more than 610,000 views — displayed a page manager-submitted top comment, directing users to read an article hosted on an advertisement-filled blog.

MSNBC's Joy Reid tells Stephen Colbert she'd wager anything 'everyone on air at Fox has been vaccinated' | The Week

Other users also shared this rumor on Bluesky (archived), Facebook, Instagram (archived), LinkedIn (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived).

The aforementioned Facebook post read as follows:

BREAKING: Rachel Maddow has quietly launched a brand-new newsroom unlike anything MSNBC ever imagined — a daring project aimed at breaking through media censorship and exposing corruption, free from anyone’s control. And her partners? None other than Stephen Colbert and Joy Reid — together they’ve officially kicked off what many are calling a news revolution.

However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting about Maddow, Colbert and Reid joining forces. Prominent outlets would have widely reported this rumor, if true.

Maddow already debunked ‘new newsroom’ rumor

Maddow herself addressed, in a late July MSNBC broadcast of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the general false rumor of her starting her own network or newsroom. “I have not founded my own news network, nor am I planning to,” she said. “Why would I do that, when I work at MSNBC?” Snopes previously confirmed that earlier rumor as false, before users looking to cash in on fabricated stories added Colbert and Reid into the mix.

During the same broadcast, Maddow also talked to her audience about the slew of fake images users generated with AI tools, falsely making it appear as if she participated in relief efforts following devastating Texas flash floods in early July.

Rachel Maddow signed a 'much broader deal' with NBCUniversal. Here's what it means | CNN Business

A rumor powered by AI

The text in the blog’s ad-filled article — more than 1,200 words — resembled an AI-written story, as did other stories promoting the false rumor about Maddow, Colbert and Reid. Some alleged AI text-detection websites, including Copyleaks.com and QuillBot.com, detected an estimate of at least some AI usage with the article. Copyleaks.com estimated a 100% match, which seems likely in these sorts of cases with untrustworthy blogs created simply for cash.

In 2023, MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies reported that “AI detection software is far from foolproof — in fact, it has high error rates and can lead instructors to falsely accuse students of misconduct.” However, from our experience with this sort of online content, users regularly employ AI software to create these false articles.

For further reading, we previously reported on another story claiming Maddow announced she was having a baby via surrogacy — a matter she also debunked during the same late July MSNBC broadcast.