Meet the Press host Chuck Todd responded to a complaint about his failure to mention Sen. Bernie Sanders’ announcement that he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination (FAIR Action Alert, 5/4/15):
I had him on the show talking up running before any other Sunday show did in October. And I plan on to have him on again.
And if you spent a few minutes on our website during the week, you’d also see how much time we spent covering him.
Some media site decided to come up with some arbitrary way to judge the show and cherry-picked facts to create a false narrative. Careful of click-bait false impressions.
FAIR’s Action Alert noted that Todd had had Sanders on his show last year–not in October, but in September (9/14/15)–and that his name hasn’t been uttered on the show since.
We did not note Web-only features Meet the Press ran on Sanders, like this video (whose first on-screen headline was “Long Odds for Bernie”), because Meet the Press is primarily a broadcast TV show, watched by roughly 4 million viewers every week, and its Web features are unlikely to be seen by more than a small fraction of that audience. But if Meet the Press is covering Sanders repeatedly on the Web, that only raises the question of why he’s then not worth mentioning on TV.
Todd may think seeing whether or not someone has been mentioned on Meet the Press is “some arbitrary way to judge the show,” but it seems to us to be a fairly straightforward way to gauge who the show thinks is an important part of the political discussion and who is not. And a tally of the show’s mentions of potential presidential candidates so far in 2015 is revealing.
At the top of the list is Hillary Clinton, mentioned on 16 episodes of Meet the Press this year. (Seventeen episodes have aired so far in 2015.) Then there is a top tier of Republican presidential candidates: Jeb Bush (13 shows), Scott Walker (12), Chris Christie (11), Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee (10 each). Bringing up the rear of this top group is Ted Cruz, mentioned on eight shows.
Next comes Elizabeth Warren, who has seemingly made clear that she will not run for president in 2016, but has still been mentioned seven times this year on Meet the Press.
Below that is a middle tier of GOP hopefuls: Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum (mentioned on 6 shows apiece), Bobby Jindal (5), John Kasich, Ben Carson and Rick Perry (4 each). Also mentioned on four shows is Vice President Joe Biden, who is still considering a presidential run.
Bringing up the rear are those Meet the Press treats as long shots, like Democrats Martin O’Malley (3) and Jim Webb (2), along with a string of Republicans: Carly Fiorina (3); Sarah Palin, John Bolton and Mike Pence (2 each); and Jim Gilmore, George Pataki and Peter King (1 each).
So may we infer that Meet the Press considers Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid to be a less important part of the 2016 election story than any of these politicians–many of whom poll lower, have less experience, have raised less money and have taken fewer steps toward an actual campaign than Sanders has?
Alternatively, perhaps Meet the Press isn’t talking about the candidates it thinks are most important. But why would that be?
Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd can be reached at Chuck.Todd@NBCUni.com, or via Twitter @ChuckTodd. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Doug Latimer
I have no pedestal to perch Sanders on, and I imagine the folks in Gaza and the West Bank don’t, as well
But the overarching point here is that the corpress in large measure determines just who is “a long shot”, and whose platform is worthy of serious consideration.
They then act as though these designations emerge from some mysterious alchemy known as “political reality”, and they are merely objectively reporting on its workings.
You could call it having their cake
And enticing us to eat it, too.
Michael Daly
FAIR you are great.
I don’t know if I can be too respectful, I hope this helps not hurts:
to: Chuck.Todd@nbcuni.com
date: Tue, May 5, 2015 at 12:14 PM
Subject: Your RESPONSE to FAIR is SLY as YOUR PLACE IN OUR WORKFORCE
Todd,
for all the energy and notions of news journalism you do, it amounts to a hill of beans as you and the Meet the Press team campaign to denigrate Bernie Sanders, who by fair analasis brings sound and needed messages to the conversation.
Please rectify a dismal start and give him the measure he deserves from the objective people’s perspective, as opposed to the contrived media projection.
Michael Daly
artist
ALEYNE LARNER
We all seem to have gotten the same response from Chuck Todd. The following is my response to his response:
To: Chuck.Todd
I’m a longtime Bernie Sanders supporter/follower and enjoy his television appearances. I was once a faithful fan of Meet the Press, too. Your online piece posted about Bernie on Friday was dismissive, at best.
At the suggestion of friends, to whom I complained about the obvious omission from Sunday’s show, and ONLY after viewing the show online and reading the transcript, I emailed you.
And I appreciate your response, despite your assumption that I didn’t see your show. Contrary to your assumption… and all on my own… I noticed the discrepancy in your candidate coverage! The fact that you mentioned him during the week doesn’t remedy the fact you deliberately omitted him from the mainstay Sunday show.
Diane Bennett
Be fair is all I ask and seems to me you are hand picking ! So I will not be watching Meet the Press
Vrede
I read the first article, wrote a note to Chuck and got a reply similar to the one that this Activism Update responds to. I forwarded this Update to Chuck with just, “Weak response, Chuck,” in my own words.
Chuck wrote me back!
“Only if you want to badly believe this creation of fairs that we aren’t taking sanders seriously.
The fact is we are. And our coverage shows it. Fair just wants traffic. I probably should even respond but I do care when folks email me personally. And they do deserve a response”
I don’t have to “want to badly believe” FAIR, it’s just more believable.
Kathleen Donnafield
Bernie Sanders is honest, respectable, hardworking Senator who staunchly defends Democracy while he stands with working class Americans. Democrats need to stop being so damned fearful of the “what if’s” and starting voting conscience. I will support Bernie up to the election 2016 and while I am not rich…I’ll happily give to his campaign at every opportunity after each payday!
angel
After my experienced watching Fox previous years and realized their lies,fabrication and confabulation of news and talking points since then I never watch nor listen to them anymore.MSNBC has far a lot of very credible host and reporters especially Rachel,Chris Hayes, Lawrence,Ed Schultz,Martin Bashir , but a lot of people including me avoid watching Chuck Todd because of his irrational reporting and ridiculous Republican guest that only cater to their own agenda to brainwash people.We were stunned in previous year when one of his Republican guest blatantly lied what he said and afterwards the viewers complained about it, Chuck T responded that it is not his job or responsibility to correct anyone lies.Really? I hope MSNBC will realize asap that Chuck is not worth for any show and even as a reporter at all. MSNBC should follow their team as Progressive.