How NBC should've handled Ronna McDaniel
As a former NBC News anchor, I have a better idea than just dropping her.
There’s only one way to cure cancer: study a living sample.
If I was an oncologist, I wouldn’t be objective about cancer: open to letting it exist freely alongside the people it harms. I would want nothing less than a cure. But I can’t sit in my lab all day cursing at Petri dishes of glioblastoma multiformae. I need to set my feelings aside temporarily, wash my hands, do my job, and later I can cuss all I want. The more I learn, the greater my chances of success.
If the politics of former President Trump are a cancer on democracy, NBC News just had a rare opportunity to dissect it up-close. And they blew it.
I was celebrating my birthday when news broke that my old network hired former RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel as a contributor. I’ve been a paid contributor to NBC News: the beginning of a relationship that led to becoming an anchor on MSNBC and NBC News NOW. My former colleagues denounced her hiring, especially at MSNBC. McDaniel spent years amplifying Donald Trump’s lies, especially the so-called “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election. Today, just four days after we learned of her hiring, an internal NBC memo states the deal is dead.
When I was a contributor I was still hosting 1A on NPR, so I knew that I had to toe the public media line of remaining politically neutral. That’s not always easy when you appear both on MSNBC and on NBC News. Still, I worked hard to act with integrity, speaking as if I was live on NPR every time I appeared on those other networks. Whether people agreed with my analysis or not, I wanted them to trust that it was the real me.
My former colleague Chuck Todd raised this concern Sunday on Meet the Press. Sunday’s show began with moderator Kristen Welker interviewing McDaniel one-on-one. Todd, the former moderator, was on the panel in his current role as NBC News Chief Political Analyst. He said the network brass owed Welker an apology, especially since McDaniel was booked weeks before anyone knew she’d been hired.
“I don’t know what to believe,” Todd said. “I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract. She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for her. She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself, or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?”
Good question. And this is bigger than just hiring partisans to be talking heads on the news. Yes, plenty of people who now work in news used to work for Democrats. And I’m not a fan of Jen Psaki becoming an MSNBC host right after leaving the Biden administration. The difference there is, we had no reason to think they would bend the truth on the job. McDaniel misled audiences in her very first interview, fudging the facts on an election law dispute in Montana.
During the on-air revolt, MSNBC’s president Rashida Jones reportedly clarified that her shows would not be required to book McDaniel. I take her at her word: the network gives hosts a fair amount of autonomy. Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, Nicolle Wallace, Stephanie Ruhle, Joe & Mika and others openly condemned the hire on their shows. Their argument: paying such a person to join this company is an affront to everyone who’s fought against election denial and anti-democratic rhetoric. They all stood on principle.
And they all missed out on something I think we needed.
Isn’t it time we told each other what we’re really thinking?
To be clear: I agree with firing Ronna Romney McDaniel. I meant what I said about the cancerous impact on our politics. Being a Republican is fine, but being a Republican who would lie about elections for political power is not. However, we journalists have to deal with such people in a more strategic way: much the same as doctors study diseases. That’s my approach: I call it “clinical journalism”. Putting Ronna Romney McDaniel on the NBC News payroll was a bad move, but it also created an opportunity.
Hiring Ronna Romney McDaniel might have done some good by making her answer for the lies and corruption of the Party today. She was paid to speak for them; now she’s paid to speak for NBC News. (Or, she was.) That gave the network leverage it never had before. I would dare her to not show up and get grilled. Make her prove, publicly, that she’s ready to do things the NBC News way.
If I’d still been at NBC, I would’ve booked McDaniel immediately. If she’s done things that have harmed our democracy, and she volunteered to walk into the very lion’s den that’s tried to hold her accountable, how could the pride not pounce?
Think about it: letting McDaniel go will probably force NBC to pay out her contract. That means the network would hand her a lot of cash to appear on television just once and add no value to the company. Or, even worse: NBC might quietly keep her on and pay her to keep her off competing networks. Time will tell.
The smarter move? Don’t break the contract: make her break it.
Here’s the opportunity: deals like this generally require a certain standard of quality and integrity. Lying to and misleading the public doesn’t clear that bar. You need her on air just long enough to prove she’s unemployable, then terminate the deal for breach of contract. That way, you justify not paying her out and make her more toxic if competitors try to hire her.
Besides, where would you rather have her: at NBC News, where she can be held mercilessly to account… or out in the wild, where she can continue to propagate lies and propagandize?
During that panel segment after McDaniel’s interview on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd never said that she shouldn’t be on NBC. He raised questions that still need answering. Now we may never know the answers. We missed a chance to prove that journalism still works. That sunlight can still disinfect. If it can’t… what’s the point?
Meet the Press could have been the perfect place for this, if it returned to its roots. The show has evolved into one-on-one interviews and panel discussions. In its early days it was an adversarial grilling by a panel of reporters (“America’s press conference of the air”, it called itself). This evolution is not necessarily a bad thing — sometimes journalistic grilling can feel performative when a respectful, direct conversation would do the trick. This time, McDaniel should’ve been grilled by a panel. Kristen Welker is formidable, but one person can only do so much.
On a more personal note — and some of my colleagues might hate me saying this — I sense that a lot of journalists are still carrying trauma from the dangerous dehumanization we endured from former President Trump. When I was at MSNBC I could sometimes feel the malaise of my colleagues, struggling to be heard over the din of Trump-era politics. Calling us “the enemy of the people” took its toll, even if we won’t talk about it. Not putting McDaniel on blast is a huge missed opportunity for catharsis and closure.
There’s only one way to cure cancer: study a living sample.
Still, I get why they didn’t do it. Often people will use our intellects to shield our emotions. We’ll make multifaceted, interlocking arguments for something we feel deeply, all to avoid saying, “This hurt me, and I hold you responsible.” Vulnerability was never our strong suit. Maybe that needs to change.
Bottom line: talking about each other never improved our politics. Isn’t it time we told each other what we’re really thinking?
If I was still an NBC News anchor, here’s how I’d do it:
8-8:30 — I’d set the scene for about 5 minutes, then interview McDaniel for 15-20 minutes to ask basic questions, get backstory, etc. We still don’t know, for example, precisely how this deal came about or what her expectations were. In this way you set the tone for a thoughtful but adversarial show, with ample time for her to speak her piece.
8:30-9:30 — McDaniel faces rotating panels of NBC’s finest for anything they want to ask a la the original Meet the Press. I’d moderate, partly to let Kristen ask more questions without also having to run the show. That would also give McDaniel a “referee” in the room to make her more comfortable and, hopefully, more forthcoming. Besides, I’m not a star anchor, so I’d fade comfortably into the background… which is just where a moderator should usually be.
9:30-10 — we say good-bye to McDaniel and finish the hour with analysis, reaction, curated audience comments and fact-checking.
A special like this would let the company start redeeming itself by acknowledging the elephant in the room. The news organization would do the kind of accountability journalism it excels at. The network would get a gripping television event that could actually “commit news”. And McDaniel would either show up as a proper contributor, newly allegiant to the facts… or a die-hard shill, unwilling to evolve and easy to fire.
Either way, I’m tired of hearing journalists bemoan our politics while passing up chances to change the game. The cancer in our politics won’t cure itself. We have to get smarter about fighting it, and we can’t do it from a distance. We need clinical journalists who get creative in times of trouble. Either way, I suspect Ronna Romney McDaniel is going to get NBC’s money.
It’s a shame the American people won’t get our money’s worth.
My stomach turned over Ronna's hiring as I did hearing the other republicans on MSNBC/NBC Air when they came along. I would have liked to see you in the Nicole or Joy Reid spot so maybe I am prejudiced but they don't like your kind of journalism - fair, open, responsible, She might become a Nicole Wallace or a Michael Steel or one of the other republicans, but who would trust what she was saying? I couldn't at all she's been too long in the gutter of republican news. I do like your plan but would NBC have thought about it? They didn't take advantage of your strengths when you were there. I agree with Webb below, I would like to see an interview and perhaps get a glimpse into the warped minds of the trumpy people.
Joshua, your show format would have been exactly what I would have watched. Years later, I can still hear you echoing in my head through the radio a few key phrases, "clear and concise journalism" and "thoughtful analysis." These concepts are not respected by those with a false narrative to push and intent to deceive or misrepresent.