McDaniel NBC Backlash May Be 'Seminal Moment'

On Sunday, NBC's Chuck Todd rebuked his network bosses on Meet the Press for hiring former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. "Many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting," he said. On Monday, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of Morning Joe on MSNBC, joined the public criticism.

• No invitation: "We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons," Scarborough said, per the Hill. Brzezinski added, "We hope NBC will reconsider its decision." She said NBC should indeed seek out voices on the right, "but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier." They said McDaniel would never be invited as a guest on their show.

• Backlash: The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the "internal backlash" the hiring provoked among the network's journalists, and Axios reports that MSNBC President Rashida Jones in particular has been trying to personally reassure anchors and producers that the hiring won't affect their editorial independence.
• 'Seminal moment': A piece in Politico Playbook details how the hiring came to be—NBC execs got to know McDaniel while wooing her about a GOP debate—and suggested the controversy is more than fleeting: "These on-air protests may be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad-faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters."
• A 'toxic' issue: The controversy has "put a glaring spotlight on one of the fundamental flaws embedded in the modern news ecosystem, and cable news in particular: the toxic revolving door between political operatives and mainstream media," writes media critic Jack Shafer in a Politico column. Consider that Todd objected to McDaniel's hiring but had previously been happy to have her on as a guest. "Is the principle here that it's OK for NBC to showcase unpaid guests who have an offbeat relationship with the truth but that it should be taboo to hire them?" Gripe about the hiring if you wish, he writes. "Just as long as you save lung power to protest all the other political veterans doing time on the air."
• On the election: The Guardian notes that McDaniel said in her Meet the Press interview on Sunday that President Biden won the 2020 election "fair and square." Last year, she told CNN of Biden, "I don't think he won it fair. I don't."

(More Ronna McDaniel stories.)