After preparing us weeks ago, this past Sunday, we saw Chick Todd sign off on “Meet The Press" for the last time. He has been pushed aside to make way for Kristen Welker to take over the mantle of the show, an inglorious exit that is due to Chuck taking the venerated program to new lows. It has been nine years of “Mr. Todd’s Mild Ride,” and in that time, he took the #1-rated Sunday program he inherited and turned it into an inconsequential program, finishing well behind in the ratings.
This matches the move made last year when the iteration of “MTP Daily” was shunted to the upstart and little-regarded streaming platform NBC News NOW. This was a result of Todd also becoming a drain on the dayside lineup, as frequently “MTP Daily” would be the only show on MSNBC’s daytime schedule to fall behind CNN in the ratings. As such, we felt something of a retrospective was in order to celebrate the tenure of Todd sinking the longest-running show on television.
Chuckles has made a name for himself as a deeply partisan voice, made all the more amusing by his knee-jerk defense against charges of bias in the press. That said, there are countless examples of this partisan side from Todd, so instead, I wanted to cite those examples of mental futility we have been treated to over the years. Here are some of our treasured memories from Chuck’s attempt to be treated as a serious journalist.
To close out, we have a tidy tidbit from Tim Graham over at Newsbusters.
As mentioned, Todd is a vociferous denier of media bias. (He once even laughably said, “There is no editorial view on any of these newscasts on MSNBC in the daytime.”) Yet despite all his Chris-Cilliza-level of pleading that a media bias does not exist, we have this contradictory commentary from Democrat fundraiser Kristian Denny Todd:
Cable news is not about reporting the news -- and again, we can have a conversation about what that means, 'the news,' but they just parrot what their viewers want to hear. So, is that still news? Are these people allowed to call themselves journalists? I don't know."
Salient and accurate words. To see them being delivered by Chuck Todd’s wife - someone with an intimate knowledge of the topic - makes it all the more valid.