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The most revealing moment of Ronna McDaniel’s first — and seemingly only — time as an NBC News political analyst came at the end of her appearance on NBC News. Meet the press.
After a tense series of questions from moderator Kristen Welker about her past as chair of the Republican National Committee, McDaniel responded, “I represent 50 percent of this country, whether you like it or not.”
McDaniel will never “represent” anyone at NBC again: the network has fired her amid a staff revolt. NBCUniversal News Group President Cesar Conde took charge of hiring and then United nations– Her appointment was made in a memo to staff on Tuesday evening. “No organization, especially a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and consistent,” he wrote. He added: “Over the past few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
I interviewed Conde earlier this month for an upcoming profile Fast company. At the time, I was not aware that a McDaniel appointment was in the works. This was a well-kept secret within NBC, which may have been part of the problem because management did not realize how poorly her hiring was received among rank-and-file employees. According to three sources involved in the McDaniel incident, upper management knew her arrival would lead to this some Controversy. They severely underestimated how controversial it ultimately would be.
By spending some time with Conde recently — and listening to him talk about representing and reflecting the many different factions in America, and about NBC News being a free and trusted platform in an age of high paywalls and even high distrust — I heard the rationale for hiring McDaniel in the first place. . . . And the reason for cutting it.
The news group, which Conde has overseen since 2020, has something for everyone, which is why it’s an important part of Comcast’s portfolio. The collection includes news coverage in English and Spanish. Local, national and international reports; Old Streaming and New Age Live Streaming; MSNBC shows favored by progressives. and CNBC shows favored by conservatives. McDaniel was the powerful chairwoman of the Republican National Committee until just last month, so there’s bound to be a place for her somewhere, right?
Unfortunately no.
In McDaniel’s overly simplistic depiction of politics meet the press, It claimed to represent 50% of public opinion (assuming Democrats represented the other half).
That’s not how American politics has actually worked (think third-party supporters, non-voters, etc.) and certainly not in 2024. McDaniel can probably claim to represent the 25% to 30% of Americans who consistently describe themselves as Republicans; But then again, she was ousted as chair of the Republican National Committee by the party’s de facto leader, Donald Trump, so she doesn’t represent any clear constituency.
Moreover, in the McDaniel era, the Republican Party shrank and suffered. Trump’s massive loss in 2020, ongoing GOP dysfunction in the House, and Democratic gains in off-year elections have heightened Republican concerns about further loss of power in the coming years. This, in turn, may lead to an acceleration of anti-democratic attitudes within the party.
And that’s what this episode is really about: how to adequately represent the views of all Americans, including a significant minority who opposed the system we all grew up calling “democracy.” It’s not just about McDaniel or NBC; This is about every reality-based news organization grappling with Trump’s unreality.
Conde and company faced this problem last September when Welker debuted as the new superintendent of Meet the press. Welker interviewed Trump, but he approached it with caution, aware that he was still spouting dangerous lies about the 2020 election. NBC pre-recorded the interview rather than broadcasting it live. Welker responded to some of Trump’s claims and included several fact checks when the interview aired on NBC. Network executives cited this approach as an example of journalistic excellence. However, many media critics said the fact checks were insufficient and questioned why Trump was being interviewed in the first place. (One obvious answer is that he controls a major political party.)
Carrie Budoff-Brown, NBC’s senior vice president of policy, explained McDaniel’s hiring last week as a matter of ideological diversity, saying: “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Rona’s on the team.”
But rank-and-file staff disagreed — again, not because McDaniel voted right-wing, but because she was tainted by Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. As Welker said during an interview Sunday, “the Republican National Committee helped the Trump campaign round up fake voters in Michigan, providing… “A platform for Trump’s lawyers to hold that press conference with Rudy Giuliani alleging a global conspiracy to rig the election against Trump, and you yourself called the Republican National Committee.” “The elections have been ‘rigged’ several times.”
In other words, McDaniel was an enabler of Trump’s election, even though she now says Joe Biden is the legitimate president.
MSNBC host Alex Wagner channeled the view of many of her colleagues when she said on air Tuesday night: “Election deniers do not belong on a news organization’s payroll. People who seek to undermine democracy should not be hired to work for an organization that seeks to preserve it.”
By then, Cundy had announced the cancellation of the McDaniel deal and apologized “to the team members who felt we had let them down.”
Wagner and other MSNBC hosts praised his work. “I really appreciated working somewhere that was able to say, ‘We got this wrong,'” Chris Hayes said on air.
More importantly, the internal uproar against McDaniel has reached far beyond MSNBC’s anti-Trump programming; Journalists across the news group also expressed concerns, according to several sources. talk on Meet the press After Welker interviewed McDaniel, former moderator Chuck Todd noted that “many of our professional dealings with the Republican National Committee over the past six years have been met with character assassination.”
Todd’s extraordinary televised statements confirmed that Conde had a serious problem with his hands. After all, well-intentioned efforts to expand the tent and welcome new voices will not succeed without some degree of participation from those already sitting inside it. Conde advocates the philosophy of “servant leadership,” where the leader’s goal is to serve employees; Reversing McDaniel’s appointment was in the service of restoring their confidence.
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