Chuck Todd Responds: Looking at Whether Meet the Press Mentioned Sanders or Not Is 'Arbitrary'
A follow up to this:http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026624291
For Meet the Press, Bernie Sanders Is He Who Must Not Be Named
May 4, 2015
````
Chuck Todd Responds: Looking at Whether Meet the Press Mentioned Sanders or Not Is 'Arbitrary'
http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=2cc78b9cff&e=ae188e3081
Chuck Todd Responds: Looking at Whether Meet the Press Mentioned Sanders or Not Is 'Arbitrary'
Meet the Press host Chuck Todd responded to a complaint about his failure to mention Sen. Bernie Sanders’ announcement that he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination (FAIR Action Alert, 5/4/15):
I had him on the show talking up running before any other Sunday show did in October. And I plan on to have him on again.
And if you spent a few minutes on our website during the week, you’d also see how much time we spent covering him.
Some media site decided to come up with some arbitrary way to judge the show and cherry-picked facts to create a false narrative. Careful of click-bait false impressions.
FAIR’s Action Alert noted that Todd had had Sanders on his show last year–not in October, but in September (9/14/15)–and that his name hasn’t been uttered on the show since.
Meet the Press covers Bernie Sanders’ presidential announcement–but only on the Web, not on the show itself.
We did not note Web-only features Meet the Press ran on Sanders, like this video (whose first on-screen headline was “Long Odds for Bernie”), because Meet the Press is primarily a broadcast TV show, watched by roughly 4 million viewers every week, and its Web features are unlikely to be seen by more than a small fraction of that audience. But if Meet the Press is covering Sanders repeatedly on the Web, that only raises the question of why he’s then not worth mentioning on TV.
Todd may think seeing whether or not someone has been mentioned on Meet the Press is “some arbitrary way to judge the show,” but it seems to us to be a fairly straightforward way to gauge who the show thinks is an important part of the political discussion and who is not. And a tally of the show’s mentions of potential presidential candidates so far in 2015 is revealing.
At the top of the list is Hillary Clinton, mentioned on 16 episodes of Meet the Press this year. (Seventeen episodes have aired so far in 2015.) Then there is a top tier of Republican presidential candidates: Jeb Bush (13 shows), Scott Walker (12), Chris Christie (11), Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee (10 each). Bringing up the rear of this top group is Ted Cruz, mentioned on eight shows.
Next comes Elizabeth Warren, who has seemingly made clear that she will not run for president in 2016, but has still been mentioned seven times this year on Meet the Press.
Below that is a middle tier of GOP hopefuls: Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum (mentioned on 6 shows apiece), Bobby Jindal (5), John Kasich, Ben Carson and Rick Perry (4 each). Also mentioned on four shows is Vice President Joe Biden, who is still considering a presidential run.
Bringing up the rear are those Meet the Press treats as long shots, like Democrats Martin O’Malley (3) and Jim Webb (2), along with a string of Republicans: Carly Fiorina (3); Sarah Palin, John Bolton and Mike Pence (2 each); and Jim Gilmore, George Pataki and Peter King (1 each).
So may we infer that Meet the Press considers Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid to be a less important part of the 2016 election story than any of these politicians–many of whom poll lower, have less experience, have raised less money and have taken fewer steps toward an actual campaign than Sanders has?
Alternatively, perhaps Meet the Press isn’t talking about the candidates it thinks are most important. But why would that be?
Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd can be reached at Chuck.Todd@NBCUni.com, or via Twitter @ChuckTodd. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
= new reply since forum marked as read
