NBC’s Chuck Todd Cites Roger Ailes, Fox News As The Roots Of Anti-Media Sentiment
- 6 years ago
In an op-ed published by The Atlantic on Monday, NBC’s Chuck Todd traces the roots of today’s anti-media sentiment back to Fox News and former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.
In an op-ed published by The Atlantic on Monday, NBC's Chuck Todd traces the roots of today's anti-media sentiment back to Fox News and former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. "Much of the current hand-wringing about this rise in press bashing and delegitimization has been focused on the president, who…has declared the press the 'enemy of the people,'" Todd notes. "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." The NBC News anchor traces the spark back to Ailes, his early political campaign work, and his founding of a news network that promised to be "balanced," which, Todd says "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." "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," he further comments. Todd urges journalists to be more aggressive in fighting against such spin, and asks the public to "ask yourself why someone is so determined to convince you not to believe your lying eyes."
In an op-ed published by The Atlantic on Monday, NBC's Chuck Todd traces the roots of today's anti-media sentiment back to Fox News and former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. "Much of the current hand-wringing about this rise in press bashing and delegitimization has been focused on the president, who…has declared the press the 'enemy of the people,'" Todd notes. "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." The NBC News anchor traces the spark back to Ailes, his early political campaign work, and his founding of a news network that promised to be "balanced," which, Todd says "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." "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," he further comments. Todd urges journalists to be more aggressive in fighting against such spin, and asks the public to "ask yourself why someone is so determined to convince you not to believe your lying eyes."