Chuck Todd Wrote An Op-Ed, And It’s Ridiculous.

You have got to be kidding me with this nonsense. 

That link goes to an op-ed Chuck Todd has written for the Atlantic, and if you didn’t already think Chuck Todd was a sniveling, whiny weasel, then you’re definitely going to after you read it.

It’s all about how meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean everyone is to the media right now, and it’s also another example of how absolutely impossible it is for people like Chuck Todd to find even the tiniest bit of self-awareness, or assume even the tiniest bit of personal accountability for why people don’t trust the press right now.

Let’s look at a few key passages, shall we?

…there’s a new kind of campaign underway, one that most of my colleagues and I have never publicly reported on, never fully analyzed, and never fully acknowledged: the campaign to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.

Ohhhh, you’ve never reported, analyzed or acknowledged what you perceive is a campaign to destroy the media, except for the zillions of times that you HAVE. How many examples of Jim Acosta whining about it do you need to see? What about the 300+ publications which released op-eds about that very topic a few weeks ago? Gimme a break, Chuck. Whining about this is practically all y’all have done since Trump called you Fake News.

Some of the wealthiest members of the media are not reporters from mainstream outlets. 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.

So….you hate Fox News and anyone on it. Neat. Way to take your issue and make yourself look even MORE RIDICULOUS by not including examples of anyone in the MSM who’s doing precisely what you describe, only with different demographics. Y’all exploit the fears of women by insisting that they’re going to lose rights under GOP officials. You exploit the fears of minorities by insisting Trump is racist and bigoted. Where was the mention of Rachel Maddow, of Jim Acosta, etc?

Ailes was a media genius who understood better than most how to use television to move people. There’s a fine line between motivating people through TV messages and simply manipulating them. Ailes’s gift, and the secret to his success, was his comfort in plunging across that line and embracing the role of TV manipulator.

From the very beginning, Ailes signaled that Fox News would offer an alternative voice, splitting with the conventions of television journalism. Take the word balanced. It sounded harmless enough. But how does one balance facts? A reporting-driven news organization might promise to be accurate, or honest, or comprehensive, or to report stories for an underserved community. But Ailes wasn’t building a reporting-driven news organization. The promise to be “balanced” was a coded pledge to offer alternative explanations, putting commentary ahead of reporting; it was an attack on the integrity of the rest of the media. Fox intended to build its brand the same way Ailes had built the brands of political candidates: by making the public hate the other choice more.

Chuck is literally bitching about the fact that Fox offered an alternative to the clearly biased MSM, and trying to make it a BAD THING that an alternative was offered to people who were clearly craving it.

Here’s my favorite part:

Reporters, I fully acknowledge, bring their own biases to their work. The questions they ask, and the stories they pursue, are shaped by things as simple as geography. I grew up in Miami; I follow Cuban politics more closely than many other Americans did. As a result, when I covered the White House, I was more likely than my colleagues to ask questions about Cuba. A New York–based reporter may approach reporting on guns, or on evangelical Christianity, differently than a reporter in Pensacola, Florida.

OMG CHUCK YOU MORON. This has nothing to do with questions about Cuba because of where you grew up. No one gives a crap about your interest in Cuba. It’s not the topics. It’s the evident bias on the most controversial topics that people hate you for. It’s the softball questions you throw at people you favor, and the wrath you inflict on those you don’t. How did you even write your op-ed with a straight face?

And then this:

…critics may be accusing journalists of having deliberately and consciously shaped their reporting to serve some political end. That sort of overt bias is far rarer. Ironically, the best example of this kind of bias airs regularly in prime time on Fox News.

But this was the genius of Roger Ailes. He didn’t sweat the nuance; he exploited it. Errors of omission and commission, inadvertent inattention and willful disregard, unconscious assumptions and deliberate distortions—Ailes collapsed all of it into the single charge of bias.

Oh. My. God.

Dude. If we didn’t already think you were butthurt over Fox’s success already, you’ve solidified it with that crap.

And there’s more:

And what did we reporters do in the face of this cable onslaught that would eventually turn into a social-media virus and lead us to the election of the most fact-free presidential candidate in American history? Nothing.

We did nothing, because we were trained to say nothing. Good reporters know that they have to let the chips fall where they may, and that criticism comes with the gig. We know that the loudest squealers are usually the ones we’ve exposed doing something untoward—and that eventually they’ll get theirs.

“Don’t engage” is a phrase I’ve heard internally at NBC over the decade I’ve been here. And “Don’t engage” was a mantra that I actually believed in. I embraced it. On most days, I still want to believe that eventually, the truth will matter. That eventually, folks will see through the silly name-calling and recognize good reporting.

In fact, we not only failed to defend our work in real time from this onslaught; we helped accelerate the campaign to delegitimize the American press corps. From unforced errors by high-profile anchors to the biggest missed news story of the 21st century—the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—we have handed critics some lethal ammunition. There’s not a serious journalist alive who hasn’t had one of those “gulp” moments when you realize that you really messed up. But serious journalists correct the record, serious journalistic organizations allow themselves to be held to account, own up to mistakes, and learn from them so they can do a better job the next time.

They’ve done “nothing,” y’all. The incessant whining and pearl-clutching and toddler tantrums in the press room about this very topic are, according to Chuck Todd, “nothing.”

And if you watch Fox, hoping for some balance to the elitist, Trump-hating MSM, well, you’re just doing what Ailes set you up for. Behold:

The Trump team now keeps pounding this message, compounding the challenge. And the president faces little penalty with his voters, no matter how disparagingly he talks about the press corps; it’s precisely what Ailes conditioned them to believe.

We’re conditioned, y’all. Because as you know, no Trump supporter can think for him/herself.  Hello – this is PRECISELY the elitist attitude that Trump supporters are sick of.

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.

Sounds ominous. But amazingly, the way Chuck Todd intends to fight back is basically all we’ve ever wanted in the first place. Check it out.

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

…I’m not advocating for a more activist press in the political sense, but for a more aggressive one. That means having a lower tolerance for talking points, and a greater willingness to speak plain truths. It means not allowing ourselves to be spun, and not giving guests or sources a platform to spin our readers and viewers, even if that angers them. Access isn’t journalism’s holy grail—facts are.

WELL HALLELUJAH!

Congrats, Chuck, on taking a stand about doing your job the way you’re supposed to have done it this whole time. The fact that you had to write an op-ed to come to that conclusion is the VERY REASON everyone thinks you and your ilk are ridiculous.

GAWD.