Chuck Todd declared war on media critics Monday while remaining silent about NBC’s coverup of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal.
Without citing evidence or studies, and while his own network chairman is under fire for covering up for accused serial rapist Weinstein (a big league Democrat donor), Todd is using the pages of the far-left Atlantic to blame Richard Nixon and Fox News for the American people’s lack of trust in the establishment media (and for Donald Trump making it to the White House).
Even as the now-disgraced Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame has been exposed as a fake news-spreading liar, rather than address countless media scandals (including Joy Reid and Brian Williams at his own NBC News), Todd chooses to weave a wacky conspiracy theory involving two dead men: Nixon and former Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
While Todd’s piece has to be read to be believed, especially coming from a “journalist” who just last week called for immediate impeachment proceedings against Trump (really), the lack of self-reflection simply cannot be believed.
According to Todd, the following dots seamlessly connect (this is best read out loud in the dark with a flashlight under your chin): “The modern campaign against the American press corps has its roots in the Nixon era” — and — “without Ailes [who worked for Nixon], a man of Trump’s background and character could never have won.”
According to Todd, in between those connected dots, there was the conspiracy of “Figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the trio of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham [who] have attained wealth and power by exploiting the fears of older white people.”
Just like segregationists, Todd writes.
No, really. Back up to the previous paragraphs before his hit list:
Bashing the media for political gain isn’t new, and neither is manipulating the media to support or oppose a cause… But antipathy toward the media right now has risen to a level I’ve never personally experienced before. The closest parallel in recent American history is the hostility to reporters in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s.
Then, as now, that hatred was artificially stoked by people who found that it could deliver them some combination of fame, wealth, and power. [emphases added]
Man alive.
Todd sniffs his nose at this ideological competition as “not reporters from mainstream outlets.”
He does admit that some in the establishment media are biased. For example, Todd boldly admits, “I grew up in Miami; I follow Cuban politics more closely than many other Americans did. As a result, when I covered the White House, I was more likely than my colleagues to ask questions about Cuba.”
Yes, because everyone’s biggest problem with Chuck “The Presidential Race Is Over” Todd is his fascination with Cubans.
Of others, Todd wrist-flicks all the bias away with a line that reporters “may approach reporting on guns, or on evangelical Christianity, differently than a reporter in Pensacola.”
Glaringly, nowhere does Todd acknowledge the countless media scandals that have engulfed his profession over the last two decades, or the countless media scandals that have erupted in pursuit of President Trump, or the countless media sex scandals.
Todd cannot even bring himself to acknowledge MSNBC’s and CNN’s biases.
“Does this mean that other cable-news networks should follow Fox News’s lead and become advocates?” Todd writes with an apparent straight face.
How many moons orbit the planet Todd resides on? Or does he know the truth about CNN and MSNBC and lack the moral courage to say so? Or is he intentionally hoping to mislead and gaslight the public? Pick one, because there is no other explanation.
“The truth is that most journalists, in newsrooms large and small across the country, are doing their best each day to be fair, honest, and direct,” Todd assures us, and then closes with, “Ask yourself why someone is so determined to convince you not to believe your lying eyes.”
And yet, Todd not only imperiously insults the 60 percent of the American people who distrust the media (we are all unsophisticated rubes easily brainwashed — while Todd, huddled in the DC bubble, sees all), his own Atlantic piece is filled with fake news.
Like a bag man for the Democrat National Committee, Todd throws out the Trump administration quotes about “alternative facts” and “truth isn’t truth” without explaining the full, defensible, and perfectly reasonable context of those quotes. He’s playing a cheap, partisan game of gotcha, which is the exact opposite of journalism.
Like most conspiracy theorists, though, Todd has worked himself up into a lather, and now he is declaring war, but…
Even this declaration of war is fake news…
I’m not advocating for a more activist press in the political sense, but for a more aggressive one. That means having a lower tolerance for talking points, and a greater willingness to speak plain truths. It means not allowing ourselves to be spun, and not giving guests or sources a platform to spin our readers and viewers, even if that angers them.
Todd cannot even be honest about the fact that he and his media confederates have already launched this war…
Hey, are you gunna believe Todd, or your lying eyes?
We will update this piece if and when Chuck Todd explains how, from the grave, Roger Ailes and Richard Nixon convinced NBC News not to run with an exclusive audio tape of Harvey Weinstein admitting to groping numerous women.
I’ve interviewed Chuck Todd. He was even kind enough to invite me on Meet the Press. But this Atlantic piece is tragic and desperate, especially coming from a legitimately intelligent guy. Todd needs to get out of the bubble; maybe spend a month with Salena Zito, and he definitely needs to listen to media critics, debate them, open himself up to them — not shout them down like a spoiled child.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.