Trying to squeeze in election-year rankings, a serious television network has hired a pair of provocative commentators from the political establishment to inject sharp opinions into otherwise staid campaign coverage.
Result – Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. debates. in 1968 — was a success with viewers and a runaway success for ABC News. It also inspired television news departments to incorporate more partisan voices of their coverage, a trend that intensified at the dawn of the 24-hour cable news era in the early Nineteen Eighties.
Nowadays, the role of a “paid contributor” – a contract commentator who spouts nonsense on demand – is fully integrated into the TV news ecosystem. Typically, this role is filled by a political veteran who can offer timely news from an insider’s perspective, drawing on the experience of, say, an elected official, Beltway strategist or West Wing adviser.
Or, in Ronna McDaniel’s case, as former chairwoman of the Republican Party.
Ms. McDaniel’s work as a paid contributor at NBC News was less successful than many of her peers. (Her two immediate predecessors as Republican Party leader, Michael Steele and Reince Priebus, work for MSNBC and ABC News.) Her hiring led to an open revolt from NBC and MSNBC stars, who said Ms. McDaniel’s involvement in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
She was removed by NBC on Tuesday, 4 days after she began working. Ms. McDaniel, whose contract was price $300,000 a 12 months, is now in search of payment of at the least $600,000 for the two years she signed the contract, in accordance with an individual aware of her plans.
The episode caused anxiety at NBC News, where reporters and producers on Wednesday were still wondering how their bosses would handle the situation, in accordance with several individuals who requested anonymity to debate private conversations.
On Wednesday, critics of the left were calmed down by the station’s decision to chop off contacts with Ms. McDaniel. But some NBC political reporters still apprehensive that Republican officials, who had mocked the network’s management for refusing to retain Ms. McDaniel, might now be reluctant to have interaction with stories.
Others at NBC query the byzantine leadership structure devised by Cesar Conde, chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, who on Tuesday said he accepted “full responsibility” for Ms. McDaniel’s hiring while noting that it was the “collective recommendation” of his team. Under Conde, franchises like the “Today” show, “NBC Nightly News” and MSNBC report back to different executives while also being arms of the same company.
Despite the collapse of Ms. McDaniel’s deal, it’s unlikely that NBC and its affiliated networks will stop relying on Washington veterans to comment alongside traditional journalists.
Ideally, such collaborators enhance the network’s ability to clarify political events to audiences when the news makers themselves should not available. Networks seek ideologically diverse writers in order that different perspectives might be reflected on air.
“Who better to inform you about life in the White House, a political party or a presidential campaign than someone who actually worked for it?” said Michael LaRosa, a former MSNBC producer who was a spokesman for first lady Jill Biden. “They have a unique experience that a network journalist or audience probably doesn’t have, which allows for greater awareness and more information for viewers.”
Finding paid authors who reflected the perspectives of Trump and his supporters, nevertheless, proved to be a challenge.
In 2017, CNN fired Jeffrey Lord, a Reagan White House veteran and tireless Trump defender, after he invoked a Nazi salute in a Twitter exchange. The Republican Party’s recent full-throated endorsement of Trump’s baseless voter fraud conspiracies has raised questions on the way to responsibly incorporate these views – held by a big segment of voters – while remaining inside the bounds of responsible, fact-based journalism.
Several NBC News executives felt Ms. McDaniel struck the right balance. While she made several false claims about the 2020 election, she also drew Trump’s ire because she didn’t support his conspiracies as fiercely as he had hoped. The distinction didn’t go down well with stars like Rachel Maddow, who called Ms. McDaniel “someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government.”
Paid partisan commentary on television news gained popularity in the early days of 24-hour cable television, as executives sought to fill airtime. Experts who could talk during an hour-long program were a worthwhile investment, sometimes more so than traditional journalists whose reporting duties were onerous and expensive.
For cable networks, it also made sense to rent famous political figures. That way, when an enormous story involves light, producers won’t must waste precious minutes booking guests. The experts were already on the payroll and obliged by contract to return to the studio.
Sometimes these opinion makers change into TV stars themselves. Joe Scarborough is a former Republican congressman; James Carville was a top adviser to Bill Clinton; Donna Brazile is the former chairwoman of the Democratic Party; Nicolle Wallace worked in the George W. Bush administration; Alyssa Farah Griffin served under Trump. And so on and next.
Beltway insiders offered their very own charm. “As cable news continues to grow, there is a need to raise the profile and prestige of these networks,” said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, a historian at Purdue University and writer of “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.”
“The incentive is to get that insider knowledge that they can sell to their viewers – so that these political insiders can tell them how it’s done Really it works,” Ms. Brownell said in an interview. “We know that’s not necessarily true. They have a particular view or potentially a particular partisan view and ideological agenda. But engaging these people helps the network compete for viewers who can say they have something unique to offer.”
The co-creators brought one other asset to the network: their Rolodexes. Glossy magazines have long offered “contributing editor” contracts to socialites in exchange for access to their sophisticated worlds; if Vogue I desired to photograph the private gardens of, say, a minor Spanish royal, it helped that their backgammon partners were on speed dial. Television news departments operate on an identical philosophy, and former party leaders like Ms. McDaniel help book guests for his or her former colleagues.
It was written by Jeff Greenfield, a longtime television political analyst who began his profession in politics Politics on Wednesday that despite the backlash against Ms. McDaniel, “it does not mean that agents as analysts should be excluded.”
They just have to fulfill certain conditions, he wrote: “Do they speak openly about their biases and identify as partisans, or are they able to put aside their recent political work and speak the honest truth?”
Finally, Mr. Greenfield added: “I have a clear and firm view on whether such a move is defensible: it depends.”
