During an interview taped with CNN's Brian Stelter on Friday, incoming Meet the Press host Chuck Todd didn't agree with a question dealing with “this perception” that the long-running Sunday morning news and interview program “is broken.” Todd replied, “I think what’s quote-unquote broken is the credibility of us in the media channeling the frustrations of Americans.”
Todd was even stronger with Ben Terris of The Washington Post: “I’m as pissed off as anybody else is at Washington,” he said. Terris relayed “His plan: Make sure he’s well versed enough in every topic to knock people off their talking points -- 'enough of this crap, let’s get to the root of the issue' -- and to highlight more news from outside the Beltway."
With Stelter, Todd tried to stress how the media's seen as the establishment: “I look at this challenge as different from what some what I think media critics see it as. I think political journalism is going through the same issues that Washington politicians are going through.” As a result, “I think the public, in their frustration with Washington, they've lumped us in the media as part of that frustration that we don't get it in the same way that Washington politicians don't seem to get what's going on in the rest of America.”
“So I think symbolism-wise, the political journalists are front and center of the 'they don’t get it'” category, Todd added.
“I’m still a road trip guy in general,” he noted. “I just took my family on a road trip, and I always come back and say, 'I’m glad I made it as a road trip' because you just learn a lot more about what’s really happening in America.”
“Look, we are in a bubble in Washington, we are in a bubble in New York,” he stated, “so we’ve got to work harder at that, and when Meet the Press -- and all political journalism -- is at its best when it’s channeling the American frustrations back through and translating that to Washington.”
In the Washington Post interview, he tried to stress a middle-class upbringing. “I’m not trying to Horatio Alger,” he said, “but it’s an advantage that I grew up middle class in South Florida. ... I feel like I understand the resentment that can build” when people across the country believe politicians don't seem to “understand what’s going on in America.”
“Tim Russert had that advantage because he grew up a middle-class kid,” Todd asserted. “I do think that helps.”
Part of the problem, according to the New York Times, is that most guests are considered part of the establishment.
The liberal newspaper calculated the appearances by the most frequent guests of Sunday programs since 2009. The list is very unsurprising: Republican Sens. John McCain (97 guest spots) and Lindsey O. Graham (85), former Obama strategist David Axelrod (83) and Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin (78) have logged the most face time.
While NBC News has changed the composition of the program's discussion panel to include Tim Russert's son Luke, “right-leaning Joe Scarborough” -- a co-host of the Morning Joe program on MSNBC -- the anchor of On the Record on the Fox News Channel posted that someone else should be on the Meet the Press commentators.
“NBC's 'war on women???” Greta van Susteren tweeted. “Get a chair!!!”
She stated on her Gretawire blog:
I just read the news that Joe Scarborough is joining Meet the Press. Meet the Press just replaced a male host (David Gregory) with a male host (Chuck Todd.). While I have no part of this decision, there is a part of me that wishes a woman could have gotten the job. It is important for women, and especially young girls, that women get important jobs and thus be role models. But…so be it….maybe next time?
Well….not so fast…
My first thought: what about Mika Brzezinski? She co-hosts Scarborough’s morning show on their cable network -- why isn’t she included in this? Why did she get skipped over? They can add a chair to the set. (Emphasis hers.)
One aspect of the NBC Sunday show that has definitely been broken has been the program's extremely low ratings. Can the new crew solve that problem? Stay tuned!
