A major shakeup occurred within the Republican National Committee, as Ronna McDaniel, the committee's chairperson since 2017, stepped down at the beginning of March. Less than a month later, McDaniel found a new, unexpected home, when NBC News announced it was hiring her as an on-air contributor. But it was all over as quickly as it began. In the wake of widespread backlash from both outside and inside NBC, the network announced it dropped McDaniel as a contributor.
McDaniel's NBC hiring and firing Following her ouster from the RNC, NBC announced last week that it was hiring McDaniel as a contributor in a move that "angered the network's contributors, staff and audience — and with seemingly no upside," The Atlantic said.
Journalists at NBC were "uncomfortable with [McDaniel's hiring] because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination," NBC News Chief Political Analyst Chuck Todd said. MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski said the network shouldn't hire a person who "used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier."
Rumors swirled that the network was considering letting go of McDaniel. This was confirmed on Tuesday when NBC announced McDaniel had been dropped as an on-air contributor. A newsroom can't succeed "unless it is cohesive and aligned," Cesar Conde, the chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a memo. "Over the last few days, it has become clear that [McDaniel's] appointment undermines that goal."
What does this mean for the media landscape? While it remains to be seen if the McDaniel saga continues to move the needle further to the right on cable television, her dismissal is a "reminder of how election denialism remains a divisive and burdensome topic for the GOP as it fights to win the White House," The Wall Street Journal said. It remains an indication that if you are a "messenger of election denialism, you may not maintain the credibility to be given a voice in many places in the public square," Rob Stutzman, a GOP consultant, said to the Journal. |