In January of 2014, award-winning investigative journalist for NBC News Lisa Meyers announced she was leaving the network after thirty-three years - supposedly to work on her golf game. However, an interview this week with the Des Moines Register gave credence to the speculation that she left because network news no longer wanted to upset the White House and other politicians.
When asked about the state of journalism today, Meyers responded:
I am going to talk about the deterioration in the quality of journalism you see on TV. I think the primary mission of journalism is to hold the powerful accountable, be they in government or corporate America. There is less and less interest in network television today holding the White House or any other part of government accountable. I fear there is a calculation that the audiences they are trying to reach don't care that much about the serious news. I think most of the political coverage these days has all the depth of Twitter.
I also worry that journalists today appear to have chosen sides when it comes to political coverage. I think you see that in the sagging approval numbers of TV news over the last few years. We've seen trust in the media hit its lowest level ever in 2013 or 2014 surveys and I think the lack of depth and the feeling that too many journalists have chosen sides has caused viewers to question whether we are giving it to them straight and whether we are making a politically balanced presentation.
Meyers has made similar charges in the past: months before she left NBC, Newsbusters reported about a Meyers appearance where she called the press one of Obama's most important constituencies.
But when they did this [the AP spying], they turned one of the President's most important constituencies, the press and the left against him. So politically, it's hard to imagine--and this is a very calculating White House--it's hard to imagine that they would have green-lighted this kind of thing. I think it's more likely that this was something that was handled within the Justice Department and that if the White House was notified, it was after the fact and not before the action was taken.
Last week New York Magazine detailed the dysfunction at NBC News under the tenure of Brian Williams. Apparently, some of that dysfunction was caused by battles between Meyer and Williams. At the end of October 2013:
Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obamacare. Frustrated, Myers posted the article on CNBC’s website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. “He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories.
Just like Sharyl Attkisson, who famously left CBS News because they wouldn't allow investigations critical of the administration, Meyers is critical of network news' ability to do its job, which is to keep the government honest.