Network insiders are watching to see if more hosts and contributors speak out about the ex-RNC chair’s hiring.
The uproar inside NBC over Ronna McDaniel’s hiring spilled into Monday morning as more of the network’s top personalities denounced the deal with the former RNC chair, escalating a battle over the relationship between powerful media companies and Donald Trump’s loyalists.
……..
To start, there is the message sent by hiring McDaniel on a nearly $300,000-a-year contract amid a growing sense inside the Washington bureau that Comcast sees its news division, which has been subject to recent layoffs and other cuts, as a divisive nuisance to be stripped down.
……..
And then there is the deep resentment of journalists who weren’t consulted about a critical election-year hire that was sure to attract criticism. “Meet the Press” and “Morning Joe” are the two main forums for political contributors, but the hosts of those shows weren’t asked for their opinion.
McDaniel was booked on “Meet the Press” while she was negotiating her contract but Welker knew nothing about it until Thursday night, a day before the public announcement. Scarborough and Brzezinski weren’t consulted at all.
“No hosts or correspondents were given any kind of heads up on this,” said one person familiar with the situation. “People are pissed. It is a deeply unpopular move.”
If they had been consulted, several NBC political reporters said they would have told their bosses that McDaniel was not the prize they thought she was.
Their argument: McDaniel’s has no juice with the anti-Trump wing of the party. (A niece of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), she removed “Romney” from her name, while Nikki Haley voters think she put her thumb on the scales for Trump during the primaries.) McDaniel is not especially close to GOP leaders in Congress. And if the point is to give NBC viewers more insight into Trump world, then why turn to the person whom Trump just ousted from the RNC?
The Trump campaign was quietly celebrating Todd’s evisceration of McDaniel yesterday. (Asked for comment, a top Trump official said, “Of course I want to” gloat online. “I just don’t think my doing so moves any votes our way. It’s this whole ‘disciplined campaign’ thing.”)
NBC insiders, meanwhile, cited a host of factors that contributed to the breakdown that led to McDaniel’s hiring: New York executives disrespecting Washington journalists; newer NBC executives with a print background — Budoff Brown (formerly of Politico) and Blumenstein (formerly of the NYT) — disrespecting TV talent; and NBC News disrespecting MSNBC.
The miscommunication extended to NBC’s dealings with McDaniel. She was originally under the impression that yesterday’s appearance would be part of her rollout as a new NBC contributor rather than the confrontational grilling it turned into.
“How could the top brass be negotiating this and then not let Kristen Welker know she may be doing her interview with a paid contributor?” the person close to McDaniel asked in astonishment. “Usually contributors weigh in on this or that issue, not, like, answer these brutal questions for 20 minutes.”
But it was Todd’s outburst Sunday that crystallized the turmoil. It was in some ways the culmination of years of frustrations, laid bare by someone who had been at the center of much of it.
Todd spent a decade in the “Meet the Press” chair and suffered so much vitriol from anti-media attacks — on both the right and the left — that NBC regularly hired private security for him. There was internal criticism, too: By the end of his tenure, the show was being micromanaged by executives, and he’d clashed throughout with colleagues at MSNBC as he did much of the frustrating work trying to distinguish the non-ideological NBC News from its ideological cable cousin.
But he won over that crowd yesterday.
……..
- Discussion
-
NBC's McDaniel mess threatens to explode https://t.co/apYMMwbKPQ
— POLITICO (@politico) March 25, 2024
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.