NBC News leadership under fire over Ronna McDaniel debacle
NBC News leadership faced a crisis of its own making beginning last week after it brought on former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and it looks to some critics like the inmates are running the asylum after on-air talent brazenly revolted against the hire.
NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde, who oversees NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC, is under pressure after some of his biggest stars blasted the decision to hire McDaniel as a paid political analyst, in a stunning public humiliation of network leadership.
McDaniel being added to the payroll infuriated much of Conde’s workforce, many of which have used NBCUniversal News Group platforms to shame the decision. As a result of the tumult, Puck News reported NBC planned to drop McDaniel and executives were deliberating Tuesday over the details. It also reported McDaniel is seeking legal representation, although there has not been an official announcement of any moves yet.
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A former high-level staffer at NBC News told Fox News Digital that NBC News and its liberal sister, MSNBC, have essentially blended together since Conde took control in 2020. The news operation was previously controlled by Andy Lack, who largely allowed Noah Oppenheim to oversee NBC News and Phil Griffin to control MSNBC.
But Lack, Oppenheim and Griffin are long gone, and the former staffer said you can’t have the amount of bleedover that currently exists between the two networks and expect NBC News not to mirror the liberal cable network.
"This embarrassing infighting shows that NBC News has lost all legitimacy as an objective news operation. MSNBC’s woke, far-left theocracy now controls everything," the former staffer said. "Tim Russert must be rolling in his grave."
Russert, who moderated "Meet the Press" under previous management and was known as a nonpartisan newsman, tragically died in 2008. The former staffer said that younger Americans have no recollection of the Russert-era NBC.
"It no longer exists," they said.
Star MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, one of the many hosts who lambasted NBC this week, took it upon herself to be a spokesperson for her division on Monday, after MSNBC President Rashida Jones was among the executives caught flat-footed by the harsh response to McDaniel.
"It’s my understanding that MSNBC’s leadership did not object to Ronna McDaniel being hired by NBC News when the matter first arose, but when the hiring was announced, and MSNBC staff essentially unanimously and instantly expressed outrage, our leadership at MSNBC heard us, understood, and adjusted course," Maddow said. "We were told this weekend in clear terms Ronna McDaniel will not be on our air. Ronna McDaniel will not be on MSNBC. And I say that and give you that level of detail because there has been an effort since by other parts of the company to muddy that up in the press and make it seem like that’s not what happened at MSNBC."
Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, and Chuck Todd all spoke out against NBC’s decision to hire McDaniel. Maddow appeared to offer Conde a blueprint to reverse the decision on Monday.
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"Mistakes will be made. But part of our resilience as a democracy is going to be us recognizing when decisions are bad ones and reversing those bad decisions. Hearing legitimate criticism, responding to it, and correcting course, not digging in, not blaming others," Maddow said Monday.
"Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn't the right call. It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong," Maddow continued. "It is a sign of strength. And our country needs us to be strong right now."
It appears honchos listened to Maddow and Co., as Puck News reported McDaniel's exit was pending. NBC News didn't respond to a request for comment.
Some staffers are irked at the way the hiring was communicated in the first place, while others believe the whole debacle points to widespread mismanagement.
NBCUniversal initially said that McDaniel would appear on all platforms, including MSNBC. However, Jones had already assured MSNBC talent that McDaniel wouldn’t be foisted onto their programs when they took turns attacking the decision on Monday. So, when Maddow and her MSNBC colleagues used airtime to air their grievances anyway, some took it as a sign that they wanted additional consequences.
Variety recently noted that the company’s "unorthodox corporate structure" under Conde has made it so that McDaniel could have been hired by someone who doesn’t oversee the platforms she was expected to appear on.
Liberal critics outside the network have piled on its leadership as well. CNN's left-leaning media scribe Oliver Darcy wrote Monday that NBCUniversal News Group is in "unprecedented territory" and put the blame firmly on Conde.
"Saying that Conde simply has a crisis on his hands would be a contender for understatement of the year. It's a five-alarm fire at NBCU News Group, and one of Conde's own making," Darcy wrote, noting that NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein and senior vice president of politics Carrie Budoff Brown were instrumental in McDaniel's hiring, however, and Rashida Jones was on board as well until the backlash began.
Blumenstein and Budoff Brown are relatively new to the TV business, coming to NBC from The New York Times and Politico, respectively, in recent years. While they’re highly respected in the news industry, some have noted that they don’t have much experience dealing with the inflated egos of high-paid TV hosts.
Some critics feel that Conde, who has been with NBCUniversal in various roles since 2013, should have known better. Darcy wrote that Conde not foreseeing widespread backlash "shows a tremendous lack of judgment."
"Conde has allowed the mess to spiral absolutely out of control," Darcy wrote on Monday.
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Meanwhile, NBCUniversal parent company Comcast, led by President Michael Cavanagh and CEO Brian Roberts, has had to watch its news network become a punching bag for four straight days, with liberals shredding it for hiring McDaniel and conservatives mocking it for the chaos of the situation.
Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The NewsGuild of New York attacked Conde, too.
"Just two weeks before NBC News announced the hiring of former chair of the Republican National Committee Ronna McDaniel, management terminated 13 unionized journalists, violating labor law. Cesar Conde, chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, never bothered to explain why the layoffs were necessary but McDaniel is reportedly earning $300,000 a year. Where are NBC’s priorities? Management’s actions speak clearly — a pundit with a history of election interference is more important than reporters," the Guild wrote in a scathing statement.
NBCUniversal News Group did not immediately respond to a series of questions.
Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.