by Nick Givas
NBC’s “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd urged his fellow journalists to hit back against attacks on the media and blamed Roger Ailes and President Donald Trump for the public’s negative view of the press.
Todd played the victim and compared being a journalist today to working in “the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s.”
“Bashing the media for political gain isn’t new, and neither is manipulating the media to support or oppose a cause,” Todd wrote in an op-ed for The Atlantic Monday. “The closest parallel in recent American history is the hostility to reporters in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s.”
Todd called out Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, commentator Matt Drudge and others, for profiting off the fears of white people.
“Some of the wealthiest members of the media … have attained wealth and power by exploiting the fears of older white people,” he wrote. “They are thriving financially by exploiting the very same free-press umbrella they seem determined to undermine.”
Todd said Trump labeling the press the enemy of the people has delegitimized the media, but said the public’s antagonistic attitude predated the Trump administration.
“Roger Ailes, who went on to help found Fox News, was the most important of those figures,” he continued. “His sustained assault on the press, created the conditions that would allow a president to surround himself with aides who argue for ‘alternative facts,’ and announce that ‘truth isn’t truth.’ Without Ailes, a man of Trump’s background and character could never have won. Roger Ailes was the godfather of the Trump presidency.”
Todd also claimed the recent political rhetoric has caused him to receive “idle death threats,” but said he doesn’t let it bother him, declaring the media’s mission more important than his personal feelings.
“For me, idle death threats are now the norm. (I don’t take them seriously, because if I did, I’d never feel at peace.) But forget the personal animus or safety issues reporters now face. American democracy requires a functioning press that informs voters and creates a shared set of facts,” Todd wrote. “If journalists are going to defend the integrity of their work, and the role it plays in sustaining democracy, we’re going to need to start fighting back.”
“The truth is that most journalists, in newsrooms large and small across the country, are doing their best each day to be fair, honest, and direct,” he concluded. “These values are what Americans demand of one another, and it should be what they demand of their media.”
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Nick Givas is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. You can Follow Nick on Twitter.
Todd did more to confirm the bias than quell it. Accepting his argument that FOX is a right leaning network with hosts that are clearly partisan he went out of his way not to categorize MSNBC as exactly the same and the likes of Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’donnell as mirror images of the FOX hosts. The MSM for 8 years had a love affair with the liberal policies of Obama and did nothing but cheerlead a flat economy and a the failed ‘lead from behind’ foreign policy that resulted in total chaos in Yemen (embassy evacuated) Libya (ambassador killed and embassy evacuated) and Syria (embassy evacuated). MSN has ignored the best economic recovery in decades to focus on contrived stories and porn stars. Chuck Todd has literally articulated the reason MSN is not trusted and viewed as little more than PRAVDA. Scarier still is the fact the Democrats have finally come out of the closet and are running as Socialist with combined with a coopted and supported Pravda-esque MSN media can see strong parallels to 1950 Russia.