Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 25, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba Bring t great outdoors, indoors Choose from 150 years of Free Press archived photos. Sizes range from 5x7 to 16x20 Also available in ready-to-hang canvas or plaque mounted he M A K E S A N I D E A L G I F T order your print online winnipegfreepress.com/ photostore A8 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I LOCAL / WORLD MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2024 PHOTOS BY JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS CLASSIC WHEELS John Routledge (above) dusts his 1933 Ford at the World of Wheels at the RBC Convention Centre Sunday. Shelley (below) checks out a 1951 GMC half-ton pickup. TV broadcaster criticizes network for hiring former RNC chief as an analyst N EW YORK — Former NBC News Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd criticized his network Sun- day for hiring former Republican Na- tional Committee head Ronna McDan- iel as a paid contributor, saying on the air that many NBC journalists are un- comfortable with the decision. Todd spoke on Meet the Press after his successor as moderator, Kristen Welker, interviewed McDaniel about her role in the 2020 election aftermath. “Our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don’t know what to believe,” Todd said. “I don’t have any idea whether any an- swer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract” with NBC, he said. McDaniel “has credibility issues that she has to deal with: Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who is paying for her?” Todd said many NBC journalists are uncomfortable with the hiring because some of their professional dealings with the RNC during McDaniel’s tenure “have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.” NBC had no comment on Todd’s state- ment. The network announced McDan- iel’s hiring on Friday, two weeks after she stepped down as the RNC leader, saying McDaniel would add to NBC News’ coverage with an insider’s per- spective on national politics and the fu- ture of the Republican party. “NBC News has a legacy of serving its audience through reporting that reflects and examines the diverse per- spectives of American voters,” Carrie Budoff Brown, NBC’s senior vice-presi- dent for politics, said in a memo to staff members obtained by The Associated Press. She said McDaniel would con- tribute her analysis “across all NBC News platforms.” One of the network’s platforms is the cable network MSNBC, which appeals to liberal viewers. The Wall Street Jour- nal reported on Sunday that MSNBC’s president, Rashida Jones, had told em- ployees that the network has no plans to have McDaniel on the channel. MSNBC would not comment on that report on Sunday. An MSNBC exec- utive, who spoke on condition of ano- nymity because the person would not publicly discuss internal matters, said it would be up to individual network shows to decide whether to bring Mc- Daniel on — not that there is a net- work-wide ban. It’s not unusual for television news outlets to hire politicians as analysts and commentators. One of McDan- iel’s predecessors at the RNC, Michael Steele, is an MSNBC contributor who hosts a weekend news program there. CBS News faced some backlash for hir- ing two former officials in the Trump administration, Reince Priebus and Mick Mulvaney, as analysts. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications director during the Trump administration, became a CNN political commentator. But McDaniel’s tacit endorsement of Trump’s false claims that the outcome of the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent makes her hiring even more sensitive, given the continuing legal and political ripples of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege at the U.S. Capitol that was an out- growth of the fraud allegations. A former Trump press secretary, Sean Spicer, chided Todd on X, for- merly Twitter, on Sunday. “Did he ever show concern about Jen Psaki joining the left-wing network? Symone Sand- ers?” he asked, citing two former Biden administration officials working at MS- NBC. Yet McDaniel’s role in supporting Trump and some of his comments about the 2020 election, and the speed of her switch to a media job after being forced out of the RNC by Trump, attracted particular attention. The phrase #Boy- cottNBCNews was trending on X Sun- day. McDaniel’s interview on Sunday’s Meet the Press had been booked prior to the announcement that she’d been hired by the network. During the interview, McDaniel ac- knowledged that Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square.” That was a reversal from a comment she made on CNN last summer, when she said “I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t.” On Sunday, she said, “the reality is Joe Biden won. He’s the president. He’s the legitimate president. I have always said, and I continue to say, there were issues in 2020. I believe that both can be true.” — The Associated Press DAVID BAUDER ;