From this Tuesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, Chuck Todd brought in authors Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann to discuss the thesis of their new book and how the media has completely failed to cover the fact that we've got one party in this country that has gone completely off the rails and that all sides are not equal with who is at fault with our dysfunctional political system right now and in the process, managed to prove their point for them by doing the very thing they were writing about.
Egberto Willies at Addicting Info summed up the interview nicely here: Chuck Todd Argues Relevancy Of Mainstream Media With Authors, Mann and Ornstein (VIDEOS):
The mainstream press is starting to listen. Its fear of irrelevancy was evident in a nine minute segment on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown where Chuck Todd interviewed Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on media reaction to their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism and subsequent Washington Post essay, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
The segment demanded a post mortem. It shows that the mainstream press is actively engaged with what is occurring in the alternate media, but seems unwilling or unable to correct their modus operandi. The introduction to the segment is fascinating. Chuck Todd relays the premise of Mann and Ornstein’s argument with a sarcastic caveat where he implies that their ostracism from the mainstream media was imagined. Their appearance on The Daily Rundown is likely the outcome of the impact the virality of their piece had on the Internet. [...]
Later in the interview Chuck Todd tries to defend the ineptitude of the mainstream media implying that balanced coverage was based on the party really believing the tenets it was espousing. [...]
His defense is a factually inaccurate characterization of how the press has been covering Republicans. One need only revisit the Healthcare debate. Much of the bill, (mandates, private insurance, etc.) was a product of the conservative think tankm “The Heritage Foundation,” yet Republicans opposed the bill on grounds they once stood for. [...]
Immediately after Ornstein talks about false equivalences, Chuck Todd shows that he still does not get why the mainstream press is held in disrepute. He immediately tries to link the past Democratic intransigence with the debt ceiling debate, with the economically damaging scenario perpetrated by the Republicans in 2011.
He just can't stop himself. More there so go read the rest. It was very frustrating to see Todd called out to his face for his terrible reporting and making the false equivalencies and watching it just fall on deaf ears and seeing him continue to do the very same thing they were talking about all throughout the interview.
And as far as Todd pretending he's doing them some big favor by finally having them on his show months and months late, and that they haven't been shunned, as Nicole pointed out back in June when Chris Hayes had them on his show, even though they were regular guests in the past, they weren't getting any phone calls for the Sunday shows shortly after they published their article.
