Every so often Chuck Todd surprises us with solid journalism. I don’t think it is that he stumbles on it but that when the subject goes far out of the rails, it triggers his inner journalist. He showed this side on MTP Daily today.
This morning I listened to a fascinating and constructive debate on Democracy Now!, between Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept and a leading critic of the media coverage of the alleged Russian collusion, and David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times and now founder and editor of DCReport.org, who has written critically about Donald Trump for decades. His most recent book is “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.”
David Cay Johnston was upset at the conclusion from the Mueller Report. He does not understand that there was no collusion given the evidence. Most importantly he thought e overstepped on declaring that there was no obstruction of justice by the president.
Glenn Greenwald was upset as he believes that the Russia collusion was never a real story. He believes the president is the most corrupt one in our history and that the Russia investigation detracted from more important malfeasance by the Trump which will make continued investigation difficult.
I added the preamble to Chuck Todd’s two solid journalistic statements because it’s simplicity about what Congress and journalists are to do mitigates the concerns of both David Cay Johnston and Glenn Greenwald.
Chuck Todd gets it right
“What penalty did Republicans pay,” Chuck Todd asked. “For never letting go emails and Benghazi and every sort of bizarre Clinton conspiracy.”
“Politically,” panelist replied. “Zero.”
“So why do we assume Democrats get penalized for this,” Chuck Todd continued. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. But Republicans have never been penalized for what they did for six years putting themselves in their own weird box.”
Earlier he made the most prescient statement.
“The challenge facing Democrats and yes some of us in the press too is that the Barr summary has made easy for people to dismiss all of those questions as sour grapes,” Chuck said. “But they shouldn’t be dismissed, and we as journalists have to ask them. The partisans can do what they do, and we do what we do.”
While it may be true that the media expended too much energy on Russia, it must not detract from further investigations. Likewise, Democrats do not need to fear to maintain them alive as long as they walk and chew gum at the same time. They do not need to hyperventilate on investigations in a manner that snuff out poor-and-middle-class-centric issues which they should cover in much more detail.