The Ronny McDaniel era at NBC News has come to an abrupt and chaotic end.
Amid a unprecedented rise up by NBC’s top stars, NBC’s chief executive said Tuesday that he had decided to chop ties with Ms. McDaniel, the previous chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who was hired last week as an on-air anchor. political commentator.
Her tenure at NBC lasted 4 days.
Announced with fanfare, Ms. McDaniel’s appointment was immediately criticized by network reporters and viewers on social media. Fans of MSNBC, the left-leaning NBC cable news affiliate, were particularly outraged, citing Ms. McDaniel’s leadership within the Republican Party under former President Donald J. Trump and her handling of his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“After hearing the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be a contributor to NBC News,” Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday.
He added: “I want to personally apologize to our team members who feel we let them down.”
The backlash at NBC has already created other problems for Ms. McDaniel. According to an individual with knowledge of the change, she isn’t any longer represented by Creative Artists Agency, the Hollywood talent powerhouse that negotiated her take care of NBC. On Tuesday, Ms. McDaniel was in negotiations with lawyers to interact with NBC on her behalf.
NBC’s newsroom leaders, convinced that election-year audiences deserved to listen to the perspectives of conservatives like Ms. McDaniel, believed the fuss would die down. They did not rely on the impudence of their very own stars, who lined up one after the other on Monday to sentence NBC’s decision on its own airwaves.
Rachel Maddow spent 29 minutes on her Monday show – the highest-rated program on MSNBC – to deal with Ms. McDaniel’s hiring, calling her “inexplicable” and associating her with historical figures who’ve attempted an authoritarian takeover of the federal government. She told her bosses, “Take a moment and admit that maybe this wasn’t the right decision.”
Her monologue followed similar calls from the hosts, including: Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Nicolle Wallace. Ms. Wallace, a former Republican who once drew the ire of Democrats as George W. Bush’s chief defender, said Monday that NBC had given the green light to “election deniers” to spread lies “as paid contributors to our hallowed airwaves.” “
Television networks regularly employ Washington veterans as paid commentators; Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff, recently joined ABC News.
Ms. McDaniel, who has clashed at times with Mr. Trump, left the RNC this month under pressure from the former president and his allies. She quickly signed a contract with CAA and met with executives from several networks. Her deal with NBC was worth about $300,000 a year, according to a person familiar with the details.
The revolt over Ms. McDaniel is a serious test for Conde, who has led NBC’s news division since 2020.
“No organization, especially a newsroom, can succeed unless it is consistent and aligned,” he wrote in a note Tuesday. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this nomination undermines that goal.”
NBC officials said Mr. Conde agreed to hire Ms. McDaniel based on the recommendations of several deputies, including Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees political coverage at NBC News; Rebecca Blumenstein, president of NBC News; and Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC. (Ms. Blumenstein is a former editor of The New York Times.)
Conde wrote that Ms. McDaniel was hired “due to our deep commitment to presenting our viewers with an incredibly diverse set of perspectives and experiences.” He said NBC remains “true to the principle that we should have diverse perspectives on our programming, and to that end we are going to redouble our efforts to search out voices from different parts of the political spectrum.”
How Mr. Conde will fare in the next few days is an open question. NBC news reporters are shocked. Chuck Todd, who helped spark the furore by criticizing NBC during Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press,” wrote on X on Tuesday: “The issue is whether or not honest journalists should lend their credibility to someone who has deliberately tried to break ours.”
The episode also highlighted the deeply partisan sphere in which news organizations seek to operate, and how to fairly present conservative and pro-Trump viewpoints in their reporting if key GOP figures like Ms. McDaniel are deemed unacceptable by a partisan audience .
Ms. McDaniel tried to remain sensitive about Mr. Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. She participated in a phone call with Trump during which he pressured Michigan officials not to certify the election results. But she also kept the RNC away from many of Trump’s brash lawsuits seeking to overturn the results, and faced criticism from the Trump camp for not taking more aggressive steps to challenge the nation’s electoral processes.
