That’s fine spin but “lack of credibility” isn’t the reason. If it were, these same networks wouldn’t be in the habit of hiring every two-bit Democratic hack who held a job in the Obama administration. I remind you again of Noah Rothman’s reality check after liberals had a panic attack over Spicer’s cameo at the Emmys:

https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/909747936615165952
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/909749378369359872

Sean Davis notes that the same news bureau responsible for this report on Spicer’s fatally damaged credibility continues to employ … Brian Williams.

Since Spicer exited the White House, his representatives have been holding individual conversations about the possibility of President Donald Trump’s former flack joining one of the major TV networks, which include CBS News, CNN, Fox News, ABC News and NBC News.

But “they won’t touch him,” said a media industry executive familiar with those conversations.

“The news organizations might use him on roundtables, but [a paid exclusive contributor job] is not happening,” the executive added.

A number of network insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their business relationships said none of the networks were interested in hiring Spicer because of a “lack of credibility.”

What did Spicey do to disqualify him from joining the august ranks of cable-news punditry? Welllll, he worked for Trump, for one thing. CNN would never embarrass itself by hiring a MAGA veteran who’ll shill dependably for the White House, apart from that one time it did exactly that when it hired Corey Lewandowski while he was still on Trump’s payroll and all the other times it hired pro-Trump talking-point robots like Kayleigh McEnany and Jeffrey Lord who might as well have been. (McEnany is, of course, now a paid spokesman for the RNC.) Spicer’s arguably a special case, though, because of the sheer brazenness of some of the lies he told, most infamously the one about the inauguration’s crowd size on his first day at work. It’s one thing to lie shamelessly for the president, it’s another to do it about an observable reality captured in photographs.

But neither of those reasons is why the networks won’t hire him. This bit from James Corden’s first show after Spicer’s Emmy cameo is:

Corden wisely plays it with a light touch but he’s trying to soothe the savage left-wing beast here after they found out he’d been chummy with Spicer after the show. Jimmy Fallon still hasn’t fully recovered from being friendly and playful with Trump during an interview last year even though being friendly and playful with everyone is the essence of his persona. Any news network that hired Spicer full-time as a contributor would get endless grief and boycott threats over it from liberal outfits like Media Matters, especially if Spicer proved to be reliably supportive of Trump in his commentary. Unless and until he goes full Scott McClellan and rebrands as a critic of the Republican president who hired him — and maybe he will! — he’s more of a liability for news bureaus than an asset.

Exit question: What about Fox News, though? They’re the one news outfit that could bring Spicer on without fear of repercussions. Even with his pedigree as former White House press secretary he still wouldn’t be the biggest Trump shill on the network. Yet FNC passed on him. How come?