DAVID BAUDER
AP Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The internal furor over NBC News’ decision to hire former Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor spread Monday, with MSNBC personalities Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace, Lawrence O’Donnell and Joe Scarborough all using their shows to publicly object.
Maddow, MSNBC’s most popular personality, compared it to putting a mobster to work in a district attorney’s office.
“I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable and I hope they will reconsider that decision,” she said on her weekly program Monday night.
There was no immediate comment on Monday from NBC News or McDaniel about the extraordinary public revolt against network management that began with former “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd a day earlier. Todd said that many NBC News journalists were uncomfortable with the hiring because of McDaniel’s “gaslighting” and “character assassination” while at the RNC.
The network announced McDaniel’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 perspective on national politics and the future of the Republican Party.
Maddow said she’d been told that MSNBC management had signed off on the hiring, but that when staff “expressed outrage,” it was made clear that McDaniel would not appear on the cable network, which appeals primarily to liberal viewers. Since then, she said there’s been an effort in other parts of the company to “muddy that up in the press” and make it seem like that’s not what happened.
“I can assure you, that is what happened at MSNBC,” she said.
Maddow told her viewers — and presumably her bosses — that “it is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge that you’re wrong.”
The on-air MSNBC rebellion stretched from pre-dawn to late in the evening, starting with “Morning Joe” hosts Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski promising viewers they would not see McDaniel in her NBC News capacity. Brzezinski said it’s fair to seek Republican voices to balance election coverage, but “not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.”
