Terry H. Schwadron
March 26, 2024
Maybe, just maybe, the brouhaha that has broken out over NBC News hiring deposed Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel as a paid special contributor can persuade that network — and the others — into rethinking what they are doing hiring politicians as commentators.
It’s embarrassing to have your own staff in revolt over a misguised attempt at providing political “balance” to the network lineup.
McDaniel’s appearance on the Sunday Meet the Press program showed that she is stuck between being an observer and an active participant in politics — in her case, including involvement in having helped foment the election denial schemes that have given rise to state and federal criminal charges.
Oddly, it took Chuck Todd, himself a political commentator mostly retired for lack of popularity, to call out the NBC bosses for their move, since he noted that the just-ended interview showed McDaniel to have serious credibility problems in trying to describe what happened during the 2020 elections that has continued to make Republicans insist that the elections were illegally rigged. After rigorous questions from host Kristin Welker, McDaniel acknowledged that while there were “problems” during the election, Joe Biden was elected legitimately.
As Todd noted, was McDaniel lying then or lying now to protect her new contract. Announcement of McDaniel’s hiring had drawn immediate protest among liberal staffers at MSNBC, and a promise that McDaniel was not being assigned on-air roles amid speculation about whether it was in return for having secured a previous presidential debate to the network.
What? What did they hire her to do if not to be on air — advise the elections results desk?
The Odd Revolving Door
In fact, why do MSNBC and CNN and Fox and others hire deposed pols — left and right — to be on their constant cable air, other than out of mistaken belief that these personalities draw audience or have some kind of special insight into the mechanics of politics game-play. Do we need to hire a bank robber to understand crime? Does NBC need to hire Kim Jung Un to explain autocracies?
The last time I signed on to listen to politicians telling me what to think was never.
It’s not to say that some who have held political roles might not be successful on television. George Stephanopoulos and Nicole Wallace who served in White House staff communications jobs come to mind. As with any good host, the job is to invite guests, engage with their opinions rather than their own, and to keep things moving.
But the now-routine idea of cycling political appointees back and forth between government or political jobs and political commentary seems out of whack, both for ethical reasons and even for market considerations.
It’s not as if there are not enough journalists around who can do journalism jobs. The news media is busily dumping editorial talent once again in the ever-cycling search for profitability.
I find it more than jarring to see Rev. Al Sharpton as an impassioned newsmaker one day, then an “independent” news commentator and host the next, or Larry Kudlow, who advised Donald Trump on economic policy, weighing in on how to interpret jobless reports the next for Fox. I think Jen Psaki is a gifted interviewer, but she hardly drops her Democratic lean in her job as a television host, and you can go on like that through the list of former political appointees returned to television.
Unlike Michael Steele, also a former RNC leader, who seems capable of dropping most of his assigned partisanship, even early on, McDaniel is annunciating a political agenda that is interesting only because she was deposed by Trump for not being yet loyal enough. That she still could be a witness or subject of inquiry in criminal matters involving how illegal election slates were assembled should be reason enough for caution.
This hiring is being depicted in a way that captures a dispute involving Trump allies in election overturn schemes, but it feels a wider issue.
Does It Drive Audience?
Bottom line, these cable network managers, people who never really offer satisfying explanations for why they do what they are doing, seem to think that finding speakers with angular positions to spout will drive audience — just as the social media coding seems to seek to do.
Most people I talk with think these figures are rather more laughable than helpful in understanding even the basics about law, politics, economics, or culture. They seem rather more intent on outwardly partisan political attacks on perceived opponents.
Little of that has to do with the exploration of truth, or even at the journalistic job to hold a mirror up to our society to force us to consider what we are doing.
The networks could spend more of their cash on hiring people to do reporting in the field or to examine data or to explore the context of news events.
The value of the best commenters like Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity is simple agreement or affirmation or total rejection; they are based on opinion, first, with the validity of information malleable. By contrast, the value of hearing even a liberal-leaning Rachel Maddow or an overly analytical Steve Kornacki is a deepened understanding about the history or the details of what is happening, whether in elections or the name of governing. It is based on information not tied to a partisan outcome.
Fox makes no bones that it despite a promised of “fair and balanced” reporting, it is interested in the result, not the journey towards truth-telling. And they have been forced to pay for it in court.
I suppose MSNBC wants to be the counter to that as a network, and offered McDaniel money as a token voice of something they want to roll over.
Simply put, if you don’t want to do journalism, don’t do it. But don’t insult our intelligence by calling it journalism and then hiring political escapees to continue their partisan ways.
Journalism is about exploration with rigor. Dressing up press spokesmen doesn’t do that.
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Another Trump Legal Appeal
Evidence once again yesterday that there are separate justice systems for the rich — or at least Donald Trump — and the not-so-rich.
The New York appeals court provided no explanation for why it was dropping Trump’s deadline-required bond posting to ensure payment of any final court decision from $464 million to $175 million and to offer 10 more days until a new deadline. Maybe it was mercy, maybe it was leaning over backwards to avoid an image of persecuting the Republican presidential candidate. The judgment is not a reflection on the appeal itself.
It doesn’t matter much what the explanation — except that it underscores that there is in fact one legal system for Trump and one for the rest of us, just not the victim-laden one that Trump sees. Courts around the country declined dozens of bail requests and delays from other not-famous defendants who were unable to raise the cash or bond required for their release.
Trump remains convicted in a New York court for defrauding businesses and tax authorities for vast fraud in his company filings over many years. We all were led to believe that the bond total was so large because it was the sum of the frauds, not a separate “penalty” that could be waived away, despite Trump’s legal arguments to do so.
In a separate New York court, a judge declined requests from Trump’s lawyers for yet more delay and set the start of jury selection for April 15. But this hearing came on the day that the trial had been set to start and delayed because the Trump team failed to ask the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District for various documents it now was claiming crucial, and the judge said were minimally relevant.
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