The practice of major news organizations hiring ex-lawmakers, government officials and political insiders has existed for decades and has largely been non-controversial. The purpose, particularly for TV networks, can vary from relying on experts to opine on certain topics to allowing diverse points of view to discuss the news of the day.
But the polarization of American politics and the increasingly liberal groupthink that has taken over newsrooms have upended a company's ability to make such decisions without workplace drama. And that is currently unfolding at NBC News.
On Friday, NBC announced that it had hired former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst for all of its platforms, including for its staunchly liberal sister network MSNBC.
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"It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team," NBC News political chief Carrie Budoff Brown said in a memo to staff.
That memo may be the only warm welcome McDaniel would receive from her new NBC family. NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny took to social media on Saturday to distance herself from her new colleague, saying "Reporters have no control over the opinion (or pundit) section."
Ahead of McDaniel's NBC debut on Sunday, "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker expressed a similar sentiment, telling her viewers "I was not involved in her hiring" and that she was conducting a "news interview" with the former RNC chair, who Welker said had booked to come on her show weeks ahead of the network's hiring decision.
Following Welker's tense interview with McDaniel, where she was grilled over her alleged actions in trying to block the certification of Michigan's election results in 2020, NBC News veteran Chuck Todd immediately took aim at the network honchos.
"I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation, because I don't know what to believe," Todd told Welker. "She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her?"
"I will say this. I think your interview did a good job of exposing many of the contradictions," Todd added.
Todd went on to post on social media, "The issue isn’t about ideology, it’s about basic truth. Those trying to make this a left-right issue are being intentionally dishonest. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin ours."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski continued the on-air condemnation on Monday making it clear McDaniel would not be welcomed on "Morning Joe."
"We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Miss McDaniel’s role in Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone," Scarborough said.
"To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage," Brzezinski followed. "But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier. And we hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor."
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"Deadline: White House" host Nicolle Wallace similarly sounded off against her employer.
"NBC News, either wittingly or unwittingly, is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air and interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections which Ronna McDaniel did on yesterday's ‘Meet the Press’… and they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves," Wallace said before inviting a guest to further pummel the network.
MSNBC's Joy Reid also offered a verbal lashing towards McDaniel for her role in rejecting President Biden's 2020 victory. She argued opposition towards McDaniel isn't about partisanship, citing her MSNBC colleagues Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele as well as vocal Trump foes Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney as Republicans she approves of.
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's biggest star, blasted NBC's "inexplicable" decision to hire McDaniel and expressed hope that the network would reverse its decision.
"Ronna McDaniel will not appear on MSNBC, so says our boss since Saturday. And it has never been anything other than clear," Maddow assured viewers.
NBC's union denounced McDaniel's hiring after the network underwent a round of layoffs.
"@Cesarconde never offered an explanation for the layoffs, but actions speak clearly — NBC prioritized an election denier over its own reporters," NBC Guild wrote on X, tagging NBCUniversial News Group Chairman Cesar Conde. "Ronna encouraged a lie that many of our own journalists have spent countless hours debunking. Our journalism is tarnished by @NBCNews execs elevating a liar over the workers who have spent years delivering the kind of reporting that our newsrooms are typically known for."
An NBC insider has told Fox News Digital that there is already active consideration in cutting ties with McDaniel following the unprecedented reaction to her hiring. NBC did not respond to requests for comment.
Notably, none of NBC's on-air talent expressed any outrage when the network in 2022 not only hired President Biden's press secretary Jen Psaki after having discussions as she was serving in the White House but also gave Psaki her own show.
Psaki herself rejected the comparisons being made by conservatives, suggesting that unlike her new colleague, she brings "honesty" to NBC viewers.
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NBC's ongoing debacle mirrors the turmoil other news organizations faced when they platformed Republicans staff oppose.
Last year, CNN staff openly revolted when it welcomed former President Trump for a live town hall.
"It's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN," CNN's in-house media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his "Reliable Sources" newsletter. "Yes, some news was made… But for most of the night, the nation's eyes were transfixed on Trump's abuse of the platform that he was given."
CNN's Anderson Cooper offered a somber monologue addressing the town hall, telling his viewers "Many of you have expressed deep anger and disappointment. Many of you are upset that someone who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on a stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions and predictably continued to spew lie, after lie, after lie" before attacking Trump's supporters in the audience and offering a lukewarm defense of the town hall.
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The most blistering takedown of the Trump town hall came from veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, who went on a tear during a commencement address she gave at the Columbia Journalism School, revealing she had confronted her then-boss Chris Licht directly about her disapproval.
"My management believes they did the right thing, a service to the American people. Some reports have written about important new thoughts and things that we learned from Trump's very mouth that night… Time could very well prove that Trump's electroshock therapy to the world jolts the undecided into greater awareness," Amanpour said. "For me, of course, the fact that the American people voted three times against Trump and Trumpism- 2018, 2020, 2022- also speaks volumes. We've done our duty. We have told the story. We have put that in everybody's awareness and people have had the opportunity to make their choices and they have done."
She continued, "I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format," which sparked applause from the audience.
Amanpour's speech was liked and shared on social media by dozens of CNN staffers including Jake Tapper. The town hall was widely believed to be the moment when Licht lost the trust of CNN's workforce. He was ultimately fired weeks later.
Perhaps the first instance in which a news organization faced such public backlash from within the newsroom was in 2020 when The New York Times published the now-infamous "Tom Cotton op-ed."
The Republican senator argued in a piece titled "Send in the Troops" that the president should deploy the military to quell the George Floyd riots that sparked havoc in cities across the country.
Dozens of Times employees rushed to social media in a coordinated campaign, many of them echoing the phrase "Running this put Black @nytimes staff in danger."
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Days later, the Times updated Cotton's piece with a lengthy editor's note declaring it "fell short of our standards and should not have been published." Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who initially defended the op-ed's publication, later reversed himself, blaming "a rushed editorial process."
Two members of the Times Opinion staff, James Bennet and Adam Rubenstein, were pushed out at the Times as a result. Another staffer, James Dao, was reassigned to a different department.
It was following that meltdown when Bari Weiss declared in her resignation letter as one of the paper's opinion staff editors, "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor."
Fox News' David Rutz and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
