That Was Fast: Ronna McDaniel Reportedly Out at NBC News.
Puck's Dylan Byers reported Tuesday that NBC News plans to drop the former RNC head days after hiring her.
Hey, everyone. Parker here. Super quick update to one of yesterday’s newsletters.
Ronna McDaniel is out at NBC News just four days after the announcement of her hire.
In case you missed it, yesterday I wrote about the decision to hire former RNC head Ronna McDaniel at NBC News:
Today, Dylan Byers of Puck News reported that NBC News is doing a 180 on that hire.
I fully expect news channels to employ people with loathsome (to me) political points of view. There are plenty of them. NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox CNN, PBS, and more — all employ them. While this has been spun by some as people on the left not being willing to hear a different point of view, the truth is that McDaniel is especially bad.
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As Jon Allsop noted in his recent Columbia Journalism Review column, “Among other things, she repeatedly echoed and facilitated Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, including by telling two canvassers in Michigan, on a call that also involved Trump, not to certify results in a key county; on her watch, the RNC censured two congressional Republicans for serving on the committee that investigated January 6, which the censure characterized as ‘a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.’”
I'm sorry, but no, you should not be able to actively participate in trying to illegitimately install a losing candidate for a second term in office and then immediately land a part-time $300,000-a-year contract at a news organization.
This is not about being “intolerant to opposing viewpoints” or anything like that; this is about what sort of criminal behavior goes unpunished and who gets rewarded.
NBC News should absolutely have Trump supporters like McDaniel on air, where they can be challenged and checked in real-time. That doesn’t mean that these partisans should necessarily be handed massive contributor contracts. If NBC must spend money on “political analysts” (rather than actual reporters), then, at the very least, it shouldn’t be spent on someone who shows up in court documents related to an autocoup attempt from less than four years ago. Is that really too much to ask?
If NBC News is looking at what to do next, The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan has a few ideas:
The brass at NBC News needs to take stronger action in a statement – and a brief televised appearance by a top network executive or news leader – that affirms the commitment to covering politics truthfully and rigorously. It could appear once at the top of the nightly news and once on, let’s say, Morning Joe and Meet the Press.
Then, go further. Prove that commitment in the network’s presidential campaign coverage. How? By using extreme care in giving a platform and a megaphone to proven liars, including the former president, and by providing sustained coverage about the stakes of the election, not just the horserace.
What else I’m reading:
“The Amateur Bridge Engineers Have Logged On” (404 Media, Jason Koebler, 3/29/24)
Because this is another tragic instance of a vehicle hitting a structure, the obvious corollary is the "Jet Fuel can't melt steel beams" narrative in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which to my knowledge did not become a theory within nanoseconds of the Twin Towers falling but took a while to percolate, was popularized by the film Loose Change and Alex Jones, and then eventually became a meme.
But now when something like this happens, every possible shred of existing information is dissected and plugged into people's various priors, regardless of whether the person has any idea what they are talking about, and it happens instantly.
“Gannett's central role in the death of local journalism jobs” (Matt Pearce, Matt Pearce, 3/26/24)
Obviously, news outlets of all kinds, commercial and nonprofit, are in trouble. But this data shows Wall Street firms cut harder and faster than other types of owners, and Mike Reed gets irritated when his own journalists point these facts out. That’s why every Gannett newsroom needs a union, and increasingly has one.
“Musk's X to pay legal fees to support doctor who sued to silence her critics (and lost)” (Mashable, Matt Binder, 3/26/24)
"X is proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech," X said, going on to say they would pay the remainder of the doctor's $300,000 legal bills. Gill had previously posted that she had raised around half of the amount herself through a crowdfunding campaign, meaning X was going to fund the estimated remainder of $150,000.
However, Musk and company left out an important, glaring detail that seems to run contrary to his stated "free speech" beliefs: The lawsuit that Gill lost was one that she filed in an attempt to silence critics from saying things she did not like.
“Policies vs. Enforcement: What’s Up with Meta’s Platforming of Violent Extremist Hate Account ‘Libs of TikTok’?” (Tech Policy Press, Alejandra Caraballo, 3/21/24)
Meta’s responses to advocacy efforts on behalf of affected users have been galling to say the least. Efforts to get Meta to act on LoTT’s posts targeting trans people with repeated and intentional misgendering and deadnaming are effectively futile. Prominent trans public figures are told that they are exempted from targeted misgendering policies and thus cannot stop repeated efforts to degrade and humiliate them. For private individuals who are targeted, Meta requires that the target of these posts report them, which they may not know to do, and also requires them to have a Meta account, which they may not have in the first place. Even when the target reports it, it is never acted on and attempts to appeal to the Oversight Board are stymied by months-long waits to seek review or the lack of ability to seek an appeal after a review. Thus, Meta relies on a Kafkaesque moderation system designed to avoid responsibility or take action. Public figures with the means to push back against the harassment are exempted from the policies while private individuals who lack those means are left to fend for themselves.
We should thank everyone who objected to this horrific proposition of rewarding those that took part in destroying our democracy. They should all be turned into pariah's, in efforts of this never happening again. They can fight it out in their ecospheres. No life boat's over here unless you are truly fighting authoritarianism.
Now she can get her entire contract paid out at once AND go to Fox for much more money AND do nothing but complain for the rest of her life UNLESS Trump brings her back into the fold which don’t tell me it can’t happen they’re bringing back Manafort and Lewandowski ALTHOUGH “working” for Trump is really just doing nothing but complaining anyway. She’s won the conservative lottery.
Still, of course it’s the only choice. The only people I feel bad for are the 50 to 100 actual journalists NBC laid off in January. And it would have been fun to watch what NBC did when she actually is indicted someday.
But still.