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Surveying the media landscape and seeing a Beltway press corps that’s constantly on the run from Republican attacks, Meet The Press moderator Chuck Todd this week urged his colleagues to stand up to the right-wing bullies, who have spent decades demonizing journalists.
“We should have fought back better in the mainstream media. We shouldn’t [have] accepted the premise that there was liberal bias. We should have defended,” Todd told The Verge. “We ended up in this both-sides trope. We bought into the idea that, ‘Oh my God, we’re perceived as having a liberal bias.’”
He added: “Where we did get lost in this, and this sort of happened to mainstream media in particular, is that we did let Republican critics get in our heads, right? The Republicans have been running on, “There’s a liberal bias in the media.” This has been a 45-year campaign.”
Technically, it’s been a 52-year campaign, with Vice President Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” attack on the press in 1969 often cited as the launching point of the choreographed crusade.
The good news is that every 12 or 24 months Todd emerges and makes these types of welcomed, clear-eyed pronouncements about the press, calling out right-wing lies, and urging his colleagues to do better in fighting against dishonest GOP attacks.
The bad news is Todd then goes back to work at NBC and rarely follows his own advice. He makes no structural changes to the programs he oversees to make sure they don’t fall prey to GOP tactics. It’s easy to view his pronouncements as performative, directed at those who are concerned about journalism and about the state of our democracy in the face of a Republican Party that broke its pact with common sense and instead now worships at the altar of a Mar-a-Lago retiree.
Todd refuses to follow his own lead and produce consistently clear, aggressive journalism, while not fretting about potential GOP pushback.
A quick example.
During Trump’s second impeachment trial, Todd introduced a Meet The Press segment in which voters from a toss-up district in Michigan were interviewed about the House proceedings. Touted as a way to take the temperature of everyday voters outside of the "Beltway," the sit-down with six voters from Kent County, Michigan, offered a chance to hear if heartland denizens "cared" about impeachment. Except there was a problem: Every voter interviewed was a Republican, and every voter interviewed opposed impeachment. ("I don’t even care. It's just noise.")
This makes no sense. If you wanted anecdotal evidence of the nation’s response to impeachment, you’d interview a wide cross-section of voters. Instead, Todd only talked to Republicans even though the Michigan district he focused on is evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. What would explain this type of illogical press behavior other than a fear of upsetting conservatives — of being tagged with the Liberal Media Bias charge?
Todd lamented to The Verge that the press has fallen into a “both sides trope,” where journalists strain to place blame on Republicans and Democrats even when it should not be distributed that way. Yet earlier this year, after another deadly gun rampage in America, and after the Republican Party once again categorically refused to support any possible gun safety legislation, Todd went on Meet the Press and blamed Congress — Both Sides — for not doing anything to stop the deadly plague.
In response to my media critiques, PRESS RUN readers often ask, why? Why does the press behave the way it does? Why does it engage in Both Sides nonsense in an effort to water down irresponsible GOP behavior? Why does it view so many news cycles through the prism of Republican talking points? Without question, the overriding cultural reason is the fear of being hit with the Liberal Media Bias label.
I don’t mean that’s what’s driving journalists on an hourly, granular level, or that before filing a story or going on the air they consciously think about GOP attacks. But it does remain the dominant ethos and it’s been ingrained in newsrooms for decades. (Being the target of right-wing smear campaigns is no fun and it can damage journalism careers.) Consequently, the press spends an inordinate amount of time trying to prove it’s not guilty of Liberal Media Bias.
That institutional fear helps explain the inexplicable, like why so many news organizations refused to call Trump a liar for four years, even as they documented his thousands of lies. That was a deliberate decision to turn away from the truth —and from accurate language — while covering the most dangerous president in American history. Afraid that calling Trump a "liar" in straight news reports would spark cries of Liberal Media Bias, the press capitulated. In the process, Trump used his avalanche of untruths to chip away at our democratic institutions.
Eric Alterman wrote an entire, must-read book in 2003 expertly debunking the bias myth, “What Liberal Media?” Conservatives “know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across–or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs,” he wrote. I made a similar effort with my book, “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush,” where I focused on the media’s failure during the run-up to the Iraq War: “To oppose the invasion vocally was to be outside the media mainstream and to invite scorn. Like some nervous Democratic members of Congress right before the war, mainstream media journalists seemed to scramble for political cover so as to not subject themselves to conservative catcalls.”
Still, the Liberal Media Bias myth persists and remains a driving engine of the conservative movement. It’s arguably more potent today because Trump made it a centerpiece of his political appeal to hate the press. It would be helpful if journalists like Chuck Todd actually took their own advice and combated the fiction head on.
(Photo D Dipasupil/Getty Images)
📰 GOOD STUFF:
The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan has a must-read this week about the daunting task facing the Beltway media, “Our Democracy is Under Attack. Washington Journalists Must Stop Covering it Like Politics as Usual”:
The Democratic leadership has been trying to assemble a bipartisan panel that would study that mob attack on our democracy and make sure it is never repeated. Republican leaders, meanwhile, have been trying to undermine the investigation, cynically requesting that two congressmen who backed efforts to invalidate the election be allowed to join the commission, then boycotting it entirely. And the media has played straight into Republicans’ hands, seemingly incapable of framing this as anything but base political drama.
🎙 FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Bleachers, “Stop Making This Hurt”
Producer extraordinaire Jack Antonoff, who’s worked with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey, returns with his solo project, Bleachers, for album number three.
As for “Stop Making This Hurt,” I heartily concur with Gig Goer:
The new song is a masterclass in alt-pop music, an adventurous cut filled with radio-ready pop hooks and sky-rocketing melodies. Touching upon the theme of mental health and dealing with a notion of inescapable darkness growing within, Stop Making This Hurt is sonically vibrant and lyrically moving, the perfect addition to our summer playlists.
My mamma's in the house tonight
Tryna break free of New Jersey
While the kids are on the street
And they're cryin', "Let me live in my country"
🎙 Click here to listen to the music that’s been featured on PRESS RUN, via a Spotify playlist.
Click here to listen via Apple Music.
There will be many comments today on PressRun because we all dislike Chuck Todd for many reasons. Eric's primary gripe is that Chuck fell for the liberal-bias charge. My take is that Chuck is a frightened wanna-be journalist who somehow found his way into important journalistic roles that he desired but also feared. Somewhere in him he knows that he is just fluff, and that is especially true these days as his importance at the network is eroding. He is hanging on, pretending to be someone he is not. He is a sad figure.
His career path is def a bit puzzling
Oh but when it comes to crash and burn nobody comes close to Luke Russert who was even more of a GOP stenographer than his Dad was. I still treasure the moment when Nancy Pelosi smacked him down when he asked if she was too old to lead the House.
I don't see why. I'm not a news junkie, but it seems pretty obvious to me how and why he got where he is. But like Cronkite criticizing the Viet Nam 'War', only after years of failing to do so, he has the opportunity for redemption. And this performative complaint, when he should be a thousand times more worried about this "let's ask Trump supporters their opinion" problem than we are and pounding tables in his office instead of covering his ass with tepid "we the media have fallen into a habit", is just another maneuver to preserve his paycheck.
Unfortunately, the same can be said for any media figure in the US that gets into the biz to be a journalist, but stays for the money... Oh well..
A sad, very well paid figure is my guess. My take is he believes what he says, and can’t see the forest for the trees inside his closed, DC punditry/network bubble.
The moment that will always define Chuck Todd to me is when he had the privilege of asking the very first question of newly inaugurated Barack Obama at Obama's first White House press conference, and the question he chose to ask was "If Democrats pass a healthcare bill with no Republican votes, will you veto it in the interests of bipartisanship?"
There is a second telling moment when Chuck Todd said it was “not my job” to fact-check politicians on his show.
And lastly when he had Lewis Black on his show and Chuck told him that if he “barked” at his guests, it would be the last time they would be on his show.
that first one is an all-time classic, for sure.
Funny how the "liberal media" obsession with bipartisanship disappeared when Republicans were bulldozing judicial appointments through the Senate and shutting down the government over the concocted "debt ceiling" crap. That was when "elections have consequences" and "astute use of political power" were the proffered, and *accepted* justifications.
Chuck Todd is #1 on my list of people I would love to see get fired (or quit).
That Todd would make these pronouncements is the height of hypocrisy. His programs have become unwatchable because of his kowtowing to the both sides are guilty narrative. One could say physician heal thyself.
agreed. but it provides a window into the fact he *knows* GOP attacks are bogus, he’s just willing to play along
IIRC, Todd is a registered GOPper. He got a rep as non-partisan because he managed to slightly criticize W/Cheney in the extended aftermath of 9/11 (Iraq invasion), and that vaulted him from a guy covering electoral horse races to the most powerful chair in news media. His only qualification for hosting MTP is his willingness to play along, and vapid "we" criticism like this is just part of the game. He isn't even just covering his ass, he's just bluffing. He has no intention of putting his money where his mouth is. It's kabuki media punditry.
He would undoubtedly say, when confronted by conclusive quantitative data about the partisan breakdown of the guests and interviewees on MTP, that he has no control over booking decisions. But he has control over whether he shows up, and I presume final control over the words that come out of his mouth. So his performative criticism of "we the media" is not just evidence of the problem he cites, it is proof that the reason this problem exists isn't corporate ownership or fear of retribution, but personal cowardice and [un]professional ambition.
Was a Chuck fan in the ‘way back’ machine for the reasons Eric cited. He appears regularly as a guest on a local radio station here and that’s when he is interesting, relaxed, not full of himself. Eric, you’re piece is a great explanation of what’s going on with Meet the Press, DC press. Self awareness is the way to growth but it seems Todd keeps losing his way. I stopped watching his shows when he became more and more intellectually smug, concerned with his agenda rather than ours. It’s when he leans back, purses his lips, crosses his arms and waits for an answer from his guests that I find him insufferable. But Eric’s larger point is the crucial one. Change w/in the press isn’t happening anytime soon given fear of the ‘liberal bias’ meme, a chronic condition w/o end.
it’s frustrating bc Todd does sometimes have strong moments…then reverts to bad DC habits. Ie you get the sense he def knows better but is happy to play the game
I can’t stand him. Chuck Todd wouldn’t recognize a follow-up question if it bit him in the ass.
Eric, I really appreciate that you make it clear that Republicans have been successfully intimidating the mainstream media for decades. If people are allowed to think that this is just a temporary aberration that happened because of Trump I don’t see how we will ever solve the problems with our media.
As for Chuck Todd the fact that he is NBC’s political director is particularly disturbing.
NBC loved Trump and made him a star. So Chuck Todd is not really an aberration.
The other elephant in the room, besides fear of the liberal bias charge, is fear of damage to the bottom line. Corporate media bows to the bottom line. (Remember “Trump was good for ratings”?)
When the bean counters see telling the truth about the right wing makes them more money, then we’ll see change. The shareholder value theory overrides real journalism.
And then there’s the fear that ‘being mean’ to Republicans will mean being cut off from that inside information and exclusives - not to mention all the boiler plate stories and right wing talking points that must be passed on “because people are talking about it.” (Cokie’s Law.)
Same elephant, different end.
Corporate media don't favor Republicon opinions to preserve their revenues, they do it to strategically invest in future opportunities for revenue. Corporations today have no reason not to be fascist, and every reason to promote fascism, they just have every reason to not admit to it. So they hire people who aid those goals, whether they do so knowingly or not.
Chuck Todd started out in the Steve Kornacki, "guy breaking down the voting" role, and then (reportedly) back-stabbed his way into replacing David Gregory on MTP. The useless Gregory had replaced the equally useless, yet inexplicably worshiped, Tim Russert. Dick Cheney used Russert (and Judy Miller) to sell the Iraq war...why?...because he knew he could. He knew he wouldn't get any push back from the docile Russert, who was exposed as clueless in the Scooter Libby trial. But I digress. Just a couple of days ago, Todd bemoaned that not having clowns and saboteurs on the 1/6 Committee meant viewers wouldn't get to hear "another point of view" on the Trump incited mob attack. As Eric Alterman noted long ago, the conservative chirping about liberal bias that he called "working the refs" has been a rousing success in getting the mainstream media to pull its punches on Republican atrocities.
yeah, MTP doesn’t have stellar record over the years
"Inexplicably worshipped" is the best way to describe Tim Russert.
Chuck Todd was on his show today discussing his favorite subject, Democrat on Democrat fighting. He infuriates me!
Also, I think people forget that there are a lot of high-profile - and highly paid - senior editors who have for decades actively avoided poking the irrational Republican beast. They have a good life. They have Rotary Clubs and Little League games and other social obligations. They can't abide by people who might "ask questions" at a cocktail party about their objectivity, which is journalism's most blindingly dumb tenet.
And hey, I get it. Why make waves?
Only, I don't know many of us who didn't go into the business because they wanted to roll over for corrupt, bad faith assholes. But corporate journalism induces even the best to go soft.
It's a tried and true method, straight from the PR professionals handbook, and now a standard tool in the conservative propaganda tool box: "Working the refs..." Chuck can't fight it, and the GOP knows it... Chuck (and by extension, the rest of the media) can't be seen to be too "objective," lest the cast of characters on the right that draws the viewers dries up... Fairness? Rational discourse? Common sense?.. These things are no match for the almighty dollar and the real threat that Chuck will lose out in the ratings game. It's spectacle, not journalism.
I agree that Republicans “work the refs” by intimidating journalists but I am convinced that people the Todd actually admire them for being tough and manly, unlike the wimpy Democrats. I will never forget how they had Rummy on a pedestal despite his condescending treatment of reporters.
Not to spew too much cynicism, but… the establishment — the ruling class and media owners — skew let’s say sympathetic to Republicans. The mainstream media are little less establishment propaganda outfits than the controlled press in any authoritarian, non-democratic state. The facts don’t support the positions the ruling class wants. One of these facts or, to coin a phrase, inconvenient truths, is that our leaders have been supporting, even enabling, the hollowing out since Reagan. Result is that mainstream economic reporting is nearly complete bullshit.
The result of this that the mainstream news is less news reporting and more like a news-like affair. The audience thinks they’re getting informed when they’re actually being made misinformed if not disinformed.
And why do Todd and company do what they do, supporting a corrupted, now failed state? Because they’re paid to do so.
There are solutions to this — seek out and get honest sources, vote the bastards out, if possible, get involved, active — how effective, time will tell.
A slight correction: They're paid WELL to do so.
The desire to hang on to wealth and - maybe most importantly - status is key to how these (almost all) guys think. TV news is not an easy business. Almost everyone you encounter in the business is willing to sell their soul to get to the next-bigger market. (I suppose the newspaper equivalent is columnists or senior editors.) To reach the heights Chuck Todd has reached he's had to knife a lot of people... metaphorically.
Todd didn't get to where he is by being just a real nice guy and ah jeez those tricky Republicans pulled another fast one on him. He knows what he's doing, which is why he comes out of his hidey hole about every six months to claim he's got REAL journalistic ethics and knows exactly how he's being played.
Then he goes on being played. Because that's how he gets paid - a lot.
He always lets the disinformer he's interviewing get the last word, which reinforces the disinformation.
And that's why Republicans will keep coming on his show... They know Chuck will let them broadcast the lying party line... Tell the truth or hold them accountable and your list of available guests on the right will magically disappear. **POOF**
Seems to me that Democratic bullying would work, too. Why are Dems so stiff? Is no one on our side good looking and articulate? Why aren't we wagging the dog, so to speak? That being said, you are of course correct as usual and thank you for referencing Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" Excellent book.
Because they know their voters will not tolerate it. And they are absolutely right.
I’m not asking them to lie - just forcefully and persuasively tell the truth. Perhaps have some star quality and powers of persuasion. I’m in the “I want to win” core of the Democratic Party. After 50 years of bullying, it’s time to fight back.
I think they have been more blunt lately. But we need to have their backs if they step out of that comfort zone and I think we (particularly white) Democrats turn on our own too fast. I think they know that too.
White Democrats turned on Hillary twice; otherwise, I’m not sure who you’re talking about. PA, MI & WI got back in the fold once a white man was presented to them on a platter. If you’re talking about uneducated white people - they didn’t turn. They revealed who they were. If that means Dems offend uneducated white people who aren’t voting for Dems anyway - let’s get it as the kids say. For the record, I’ve never voted for a Republican and there is nothing a Dem can say to make me change my mind. If they need to dumb it down or fluff it up or create controversy, I’m down, as long as we win votes.
Editorials are labeled as such for good reason. But when the media does a "man on the street" in response to reporting of the facts, they get opinions, and in turn publish them regardless of the facts reported on. A reasonable assessment of the result can be found reviewing Jay Leno or Jimmy Kimmel's famous sidewalk interviews, which can be both hilarious and frightening. I'm with you, Eric. Today's piece is right on the money.
Todd is certifiably awful. His "are you concerned that...." framing bias is tiresome.
Any time someone reveals the chief chucktodd of them all as the octillionth of a cent streetwalker he is, it's a good thing.
What is so depressing is that I'm old enough to remember when Lawrence Spivak and Bill Munro hosted Meet The Press and they pulled no punches with their questions.
Meet the Press began to go downhill when Roger Budd took over. I still remember when he made an ass of himself insulting Gary Hart in 2004.
Bob Somerby's Daily Howler chronicled how Tim Russert endlessly recited talking points given to him by GOP operatives.
David Gregory was even more of a partisan hack and Chuck U Todd has finished turning the show into Press The Meat. It's a joke just like the rest of the Sunday Gasbag shows.
I love how autocorrect changed Roger Mudd to Roger Budd...
In the Chuck Todd piece, the auto-editor/spell-checker software failed you. I think you mean "altar" not "alter" in reference to the embellished status of Mar-a-Lago.
Oh geez thanks will fix for online version
Does it alter the story?
Depends upon which altar you are preaching from 😋.
As you said, it's unfortunate that Todd can't follow his own advice. From beltway pals I've heard he's a real music fan. (that midwest/trying to find something nice to say)
Wondering if Chuck reads PressRun?
No why would he want to read the truth when his platform is all about lies and disinformation. He would only see his shortcomings in reading this newsletter. Making him smaller than he already is.
Not wanting him to shrink, but to hear from his ‘audience.’ Fanciful I know.
Thank you for the support!
Don’t write off the WaPo. Jennifer Rubin and the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman are doing great work and post daily. Margaret Sullivan also does a great job. All of these people have no hesitation to call out their colleagues for timidity, faux balance and sensationalism. In fact Jennifer Rubin has a great article up today which “Here’s how the media can cover Republicans responsibly” which links to the Sullivan article that Eric also noted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/29/what-would-responsible-coverage-look-like/
The more of us who read these people the more likely the Post is to publish this kind of article.
I get most of my actual news from the AP (https://apnews.com/) and Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/) feeds. ProPublica (https://www.propublica.org/) is an excellent source of in-depth reporting on various subjects. For actual (non-political) news, the NYT and WaPo get it right much more often than not, but their national political coverage generally collapses into incoherent bothsides gibberish.
Newsletters like this one, including Popular Information, Big, Letters from an American, and Noahpinion (all on Substack) help fill out the other sources or provide background information I wouldn't otherwise have without a lot of extra work (e.g. Popular Information listing corporate donors to Republican reps who voted to overthrow the government).
Interesting. I too am divorcing myself from msm a little at a time, and I was an all day msnbc watcher. Ugh. I’m thrilled to have newsletters such as this to go to for ‘the real thing.’ I doubt we are alone in weaning ourselves away from/quitting msm. Supply. Demand. Consumer power?
We are definitely not alone. I have subscriptions to the Times and the Post and I delete their emails and notices. I know, I should unsubscribe but the Times is difficult to give up when you live in NYC and the Post is occasionally a reality check on the awful Times. I get most of my news from this newsletter, TBS by Adam Parkhomenko and linking to journalists I like on Twitter (e.g., Yamiche, Aaron Rupar, Jay Rosen).
Sad but true... It's just too expensive to run a large media organization nowadays if your intention is to broadcast truth instead of make money... It's the modern Faustian bargain that monetized media has made.