Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC was short. The former Republican National Committee chairwoman was hired as an on-air political commentator but released just days later after an on-air revolt by the network’s leading stars. Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The Times, discusses the saga and what it might reveal about the state of television news heading into the 2024 presidential race. Guest: Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times.

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is a daily.
0:07.0	Today, the saga of Ronald McDaniel and NBC, and what it reveals about the state of television news
0:20.0	headed into the 2024 presidential race.
0:23.0	Jim Ruttenberg, a Times writer at large, April 1st. Jim, NBC News, just went through a very public, a very searing drama over the past week that we wanted you to make sense of in your unique capacity as a long time media
0:56.7	and political reporter at the time. This is your sweet spot. You were I believe born to dissect this story for us.
1:04.0	Oh brother.
1:07.0	Well on the one hand this is a very small moment for a major network like NBC.
1:12.0	They hire as a contributor, not an anchor, not a correspondent, as a contributor,
1:17.0	Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC Chairwoman, it blows up in a mini scandal at the network. But to me it represents a much
1:25.7	larger issue that's been there since that moment Donald J Trump took his shiny
1:29.3	gold escalator down to announce his presidential run in 2015.
1:33.0	This struggle by the news media to figure out,
1:36.0	especially on television, how do we capture him,
1:39.5	cover him for all of his lies,
1:41.0	all the challenges he poses to democratic norms, yet not alienate
1:47.0	some 74, 75 million American voters who still follow him, still believe in him, and still want to hear his
1:57.4	reality reflected in the news that they're listening to.
2:00.3	Right.
2:01.3	Which is about as gnarly a conundrum as anyone has ever dealt with in the news
2:06.2	media. Well it's proven so far unsolvable. Well let's use the story of what actually happened with Ronna McDaniel and NBC to illustrate your
2:16.7	point.
2:17.7	And I think that means describing precisely what happened in this situation.
	...

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