Chuck Todd Laments Trump, Right-Wing Media in Atlantic Rant

The moderator of NBC’s “Meet The Press” wrote an opinion piece in The Atlantic whining about the rise of the right-wing media outlets and distrust of the mainstream press.

“Some of the wealthiest members of the media are not reporters from mainstream outlets,” Todd said. “Figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the trio of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham have attained wealth and power by exploiting the fears of older white people. They are thriving financially by exploiting the very same free-press umbrella they seem determined to undermine.”

Hannity, Tucker and Ingraham all work at Fox News, which is the most-watched cable news network in America. Drudge’s website is one of the most heavily trafficked in the world. They are the very definition of “mainstream.”

The fact that Todd has not realized this is indicative of the problem of the left-wing mainstream press, which cannot accept the fact people distrust them because they are not trustworthy.

“Bashing the media for political gain isn’t new, and neither is manipulating the media to support or oppose a cause,” Todd said. “These practices are at least as old as the Gutenberg press. But antipathy toward the media right now has risen to a level I’ve never personally experienced before. The closest parallel in recent American history is the hostility to reporters in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s.”

What does that say about the state of the mainstream press? If animosity towards the media rivals that of Jim Crow, something must be seriously wrong. But according to Todd, that is the fault of the President, who is covered 90% negatively in the media, not the networks who continuously drag him through the mud.

“Much of the current hand-wringing about this rise in press bashing and delegitimization has been focused on the president, who—as every reporter in America sadly knows—has declared the press the ‘enemy of the people,’ he wrote. “But, like much else in the Trump era, Donald Trump didn’t start this fire; he’s only spread it to a potentially more dangerous place.”

Todd ended his grievance piece calling for the left-wing press to fight back against Trump.

“Instead of attacking rivals, or assailing critics—going negative,in the parlance of political campaigns—reporters need to showcase and defend our reporting,” he said. “Every day, we need to do our job, check our facts, strive to be transparent, and say what we’re seeing.”

That sounds like a great plan. Perhaps some honest reporting would lead to less strife between Trump and the media.

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