The Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd

[babylonsister]

PressThink, a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, is written by Jay Rosen.

The Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd
That disinformation was going to overtake Republican politics was discoverable years before he says he discovered it.
26 Dec 2019 1:40 am


‘Round midnight on Christmas eve, Rolling Stone posted a short interview with Chuck Todd, host of “the longest running show on television,” NBC’s Meet the Press.

Its contents were explosive, embarrassing, enraging, and just plain weird.

Three years after Kellyanne Conway introduced the doctrine of “alternative facts” on his own program, a light went on for Chuck Todd. Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists — even when you know it’s a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in — and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump among loyalists when his increasingly brazen actions are reported as news.

Todd repeatedly called himself naive for not recognizing the pattern, itself an astounding statement that cast doubt on his fitness for office as host of Meet the Press. While the theme of the interview was waking up to the truth of Republican actions in the information warfare space, Todd went to sleep on the implications of what he revealed. It took him three years to understand a fact about American politics that was there on the surface, unconcealed since the day after inauguration. Many, many interpreters had described it for him during those lost years when he could not bring himself to believe it. (I am one.)

You cannot call that an oversight. It’s a strategic blindness that he superintended. By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

snip//

It’s not naive of him. It’s malpractice. Chuck Todd’s entire brand is based on the claim that he understands politics. Since 2007 he has been NBC’s political director, which means he has influence over all coverage. He is literally the in-house expert on the subject. You don’t get to claim you are naive about politics when you have these kinds of positions. It would be like a chief risk officer saying, “I didn’t understand the gamble we were taking.” Well, that’s your job.


more...

http://pressthink.org/2019/12/the-christmas-eve-confessions-of-chuck-todd/

[underpants]

1. Wow Chuck Todd

[Faux pas]

2. I aways thought he

was an ass, now it's confirmed that he's a stoopid ass too. That confession should get him canned.

[Cirque du So-What]

8. Should. Doesn't.

Leads me to believe that Choad is just the way network execs like ‘em - nice’n’stoopid.

[Thomas Hurt]

3. How does a real political journalist not recognize propaganda

When they see it? When you need to prolong controversies for ratings.

[Whiskeytide]

4. Yep. Todd may be a baffoon, but he's not ...

... a complete moron. He right well knew what was up, and he nursed it for ratings dipped in bothsiderism.

[GeorgeGist]

5. He's NOT a REAL journalist ...

in fact he never graduated from college.

[erronis]

11. Quite a few top-rated newspeople without degrees

https://www.cnn.com/2011/12/30/opinion/schmitz-college/index.html

Brian Williams attended three schools and completed 18 undergraduate credits before working his way to NBC News anchor. Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor were also anchors without degrees. And many reporters and columnists never completed college, including Nina Totenberg of NPR, Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post and former New York Times columnist and wordsmith William Safire.

I'm sure you were tongue-in-cheek since many of the most successful people didn't use a degree to achieve their success.

Sure, attendance at a good school and networking are helpful. So are rich parents. So is having the right "package" (male, white, good-looking, tall, etc.).

I've done pretty damn well for 60+ years of working/earning without even a high-school diploma. Wish I had done a lot more but that's life.

[marble falls]

6. Sounds to me like Chuck finally got it that Trump isn't going to be re-elected ...

so now he doesn't have to bend over so far backwards to be "fair and balanced".

[Leith]

7. Riiiiiight...

Every single last one of us here knew that the rethugs were spoofing Chuckie Toad. We yelled at the TV, we called him a moron and worse, many of us permanently turned him off. We at DU all knew.

So now the guy who has been NBC's political director for 12+ years claims to have been oblivious to all their propaganda? Oh, bite me.

[erronis]

9. "It's not naive of him. It's malpractice." - This needs to be the theme. Intentional malfeasance.

[stopdiggin]

10. yep. "and the scales fell from his eyes."

NOT BUYING.
Chuck knew the Trump brand from the get go. I think the real story might be that people were surprised at how totally the Republican party would buy in. But for Todd? No excuses. Malfeasance and malpractice.

[Paladin]

12. I'll never forgive Todd for his non-stop trashing of Hillary in 2016.

For that, and that alone, he should have been relegated to some local news show in Montana, forever. The little bastard.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

13. upChuck Toady should be in charge of the plastic spoons at the coffee pot

[Poiuyt]

14. How much do you want to bet that he doesn't change one thing about his show?

The Upton Sinclair quote is spot on