Chuck Todd and Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC, 2018
NBC‘s “Meet the Press” host and moderator Chuck Todd announced on air last Sunday that he is leaving the show. Starting in September, Kristen Welker, NBC News’ co-chief White House correspondent, will take Todd’s place. In his statement, Todd said,“We didn’t tolerate propagandists, and this network and program never will.” Sadly, however, that was far from the case.
In fact, “Meet the Press,” during and before Chuck Todd’s time as host, was known as the place where Republicans came to spread their false talking points with the knowledge that they would not be confronted with many refutations or even pointed follow-up questions. For example, when Dick Cheney was Vice President under George W. Bush, Cheney’s communications director, Cathie Martin, regarded “Meet the Press” as the VP’s “best format” to be able to “control [his] message.” Likewise, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, convicted felon Irve Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and other government officials could call Todd’s predecessor at “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, and privately make their political points in the comfort that (a) they would be asked no difficult questions during the call, and (b) anything they said over the phone would automatically be considered off, rather than on, the record, a very weak and enabling form of journalism.
Todd’s own tenure at NBC News has been no better. One particular low point occurred in 2013, in the middle of false Republican attacks on President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act, which had been signed into law but had not yet taken effect. As we described at the time, Todd shockingly said on-air that it isn’t the fault of “folks in the media” like himself that Republicans were getting away with so many Affordable Care Act lies, but rather, “it’s the President of the United States’ fault for not selling it.” Todd was deservedly castigated by many people for giving Republican lies the same weight as facts from the other side, rather than doing the basic job of journalism, which is to investigate and report the truth, and point out when something is a fact and another thing is a lie.
So the question then becomes, will “Meet the Press” do any better job of journalism under new host Kristen Welker? While Welker generally receives high marks for her work at NBC, including as moderator for the final 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, a deeper dive reveals that such praise in that case had to do with keeping the candidates from interrupting each other too much, not for being especially tough or demanding the truth, something we know is quite foreign to Trump.
Second, as years of experience with Vice President Cheney and his office demonstrated, the most valuable currency in the political media, and indeed the current business model for TV news, seems to be access to political leaders, and the ability to get them on air, hopefully to say newsworthy things and boost the network’s ratings. Based on this history, such desire for access often turns into enabling. If political figures are given too hard a time during interviews on one network, they may choose to go to a more “friendly” media outlet next time. For Republicans, an obvious choice is Fox “News,” where they would typically receive the ultimate cheerleading treatment. Why would the NBC News bosses take such a risk?
Therefore, let’s just say that we are not especially hopeful.
Photo by Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/koavs0
