***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
Over the weekend, NBC’s political director and moderator of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd lashed out at those who would “tar all media” for their enthusiastic sprint to push impeachment following BuzzFeed’s false report. In a Monday appearance on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Hill media reporter Joe Concha blasted Todd for failing in his duty as political director and allowing his team to mention impeachment 97 times.
After playing a soundbite of Todd lamenting how people would use this against the media writ large, Tucker pointed out that it exposed how Todd thought like a “political operative”. “Their first concern is always, how will the other side benefit from this? How can we win the next campaign? And that's how they think because that's exactly what they're doing,” he chided.
Concha was then brought on to discuss those points. “Everybody, all those anchors and pundits you just show had ample warning that there was a serious problem with this story…” he said, pointing to how the BuzzFeed co-authors had conflicting accounts of whether or not they’ve seen the underlying documents.
“That is your red flag right there,” Concha continued, “where Chuck Todd, as a political director, then needs to get the troops together and say, ‘Guys, look, our own news organization, NBC News, could not verify this report independently, and therefore, we should go about this with extreme caution.’”
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