MSNBC’s Chuck Todd is being attacked by the left for his comments that the President has failed to sell Americans on Obamacare. There is even a petition taking him to task that garnered over 60,000 signatures in only a few days time.
On the September 18 broadcast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Chuck Todd insisted that it is not the media’s fault if the public is believes the GOP line that Obamacare is a bad deal for everyone. He said if Americans do not like Obamacare it’s because Obama “isn’t selling it” the right way.
Polls are consistently showing that Obama’s healthcare law is very unpopular, but Todd asserts that if the President wants to turn that around it is absolutely up to him to change minds and sell his program.
During the discussion on Obamacare’s poor poll numbers, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell claimed that much of what the public knows about Obamacare is erroneous information fed to them by the Republican Party’s attacks on the law. Todd chimed in saying that the GOP has successfully “messaged against” Obamacare.
“But more importantly,” Chuck Todd said, “it would be stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against it. They don’t repeat the other stuff because they haven’t even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, ‘Well, it’s you folks’ fault in the media.’ No, it’s the President of the United States’ fault for not selling it.”
It was not long before Todd became the object of attack by the left-wing talking points generators. Only an hour or so had passed before left-wing bloggers at TPM slammed Todd with a headline that read: “Chuck Todd: It’s Not Media’s Job To Correct GOP’s Obamacare Falsehoods .”
Todd himself corrected the matter in a Tweet saying, “Somebody decided to troll w/mislding headline: point I actually made was folks shouldn’t expect media to do job WH has FAILED to do re: ACA.”
The MSNBC host followed that up a little later with another Tweet: “I was NOT saying it isn’t job of journos to call out lies, I said it was not job of media to sell WH’s health care message, it is WH’s job.”
Several other websites jumped on the topic and from there it made its way to many of the smaller blogs.
Not long afterward, a petition was started to force NBC to scold Chuck Todd for having “completely abdicated his responsibility as a journalist.”
The petition, which reached 63,883 signers at press time, says:
Chuck Todd’s assertion that correcting Republican lies isn’t his job is factually incorrect and counter to the purpose of journalism. Hold Chuck Todd accountable by issuing a public apology for his outrageous statement and ensure that all NBC News/MSNBC journalists know that correcting political misinformation and lies is part of their job description.
Why is this important?
In a Morning Joe segment this week on misinformation about the Affordable Care Act, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd made the outrageous claim that it isn’t his job to inform viewers when Republican politicians lie about political issues.
How is it possible that the Political Director of NBC News doesn’t think it is his job to inform NBC viewers with facts about important political issues?
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