NBC Proves the Media Can't Save Democracy

The decision to hi former RNC chair is a symptom of a larger problem

Sometimes, a piece of news pops up that is so up my alley that I have so much to say/write/Tweet/Thread about it that I become paralyzed. How do I condense 10,000 half-baked takes into a 1,000-word newsletter or a 280-character post on social media?

This is how I felt about the scandal over NBC News paying $300,000 a year to former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel to serve as an on-air contributor. I spent much of my professional life yelling about the press's tendency to prioritize balance over accuracy. It was a major theme in my book after the 2020 election. But alas, nearly a week after the hire, four days after Chuck Todd led an on-air rebellion against his bosses, and two days after NBC cut ties with McDaniel, everything that needs to be said has probably been said, and I finally decided to weigh in.

Many Are Missing the Point

Other commentators question how NBC could spend so much money and lend their credibility to someone who actively tried to overthrow an election.

I’ll be honest, I don’t care much about the specifics.

I get why Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki and others felt betrayed by their bosses. Journalists are getting laid off left and right, and a media organization hires a known liar who (in Chuck Todd’s words) gaslights NBC journalists covering the RNC? It is offensive.

On one level, who cares that much about how NBC News wants to spend $300,000 a year? They are a big network owned by an even bigger mega-corporation. The line items for pastries in the green room is likely larger than McDaniel’s salary. I also question the importance of the role of a political commentator because I was one. CNN hired me as a political commentator after I left the White House in 2015. I stayed on their payroll until 2019. I was admittedly pretty bad at it. Condensing my views into cable news-sized sound bites has never been my forte. I struggled to get into the kayfabe that is cable news debates between partisans. My job was to appear on cable when they asked and travel to major political events like conventions or debates. I had no role in what CNN covered, what the anchors said, or how the news was framed. I was just a voice on the air every once in a while, and the term “CNN Political Commentator” carried no weight, nor did it imbue me with CNN’s journalistic credibility.

I am confident McDaniel would not have convinced a single MSNBC viewer to support Trump or distrust the 2020 election results. But that doesn’t mean that NBC’s decision was not asinine and indicative of a larger disease plaguing political media in the Trump era.

A Desperate Desire to Normalize

The whole Ronna fiasco shows that people who call the shots in the media aren’t coping with the reality of covering Donald Trump and an extremist movement prone to violence.

What was NBC thinking? Did they believe that someone publicly defenestrated by Trump possessed special insight into his campaign and possible future White House? Did they hope paying McDaniel would buy them credibility with Republican viewers or politicians? Maybe they thought McDaniel had some special insight or talent never previously demonstrated in countless media appearances.

They didn’t think it all. NBC hired McDaniel because that’s what they have always done.

When I left the White House, this is what cable networks did for decades when a top political official became available. You wanted to lock them down to exclusively have their voice on your air. It’s why David Axelrod is on CNN and Karl Rove is on Fox. It’s how George Stephanopolous and Nicole Wallace went from White House communications directors to network anchors.

But those were more quasi-normal times. Donald Trump tried to violently overthrow the government. He threatened the press, and his supporters take his words deadly seriously. Only a few years ago, a Trump supporter mailed a pipe bomb to CNN and others that the former President frequently attacked on Twitter.

NBC — and most of the press — have yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat. Donald Trump and his enablers represent an extraordinary threat to democracy. This industry, which prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is a dishonest, corrupt insurrectionist. To accurately portray events would make the press out to be biased and they would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.

The Corporate Media Won’t Save Us

The vituperative reaction to NBC hiring McDaniel, as well as every perceived misdeed by the New York Times, is fueled by a naive sense that the media’s role is to protect democracy. We think if we just yell loud enough or Tweet often enough, the press will understand their job better. I have no problem with Democrats and people who love democracy working the refs. NBC’s decision to backtrack on McDaniel shows that we can win some battles that way. But, after twenty years of fighting with the press, I have concluded that they cannot be a bulwark against authoritarianism or the right-wing media machine pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories.

At the end of the day, traditional media outlets are line items in the P&L sheets of larger corporations. Despite the democracy-saving work done by many journalists in often dangerous situations, their bosses are only judged on whether they make money for a parent company.

This is why progressives must continue to invest in our media apparatus. We need the machinery to tell our story to our voters and to spread our message on our terms far and wide. Democratic leaders should promote the development of this ecosystem by appearing on progressive media and running ads. (yes, of course, I am very biased on this topic.)

Democratic voters and activists can help this effort simply by subscribing to or patronizing anti-Trump outlets like Crooked Media, Courier News, MeidasTouch, or The

The Bulwark

and supporting independent creators like Brian Tyler Cohen,

Mehdi Hasan

,

Kyle Tharp

Jessica Craven

,

Simon Rosenberg

,

Parker Molloy

and so many others (you can see a list of substacks I recommend here). And if you are not yet a paid subscriber to this newsletter, there is no time like the present.

Politics is information warfare, and too many Democrats are content to outsource our messaging to the folks who think Ronna McDaniel is worth hiring.