Network political contributors have a long history. But are they more trouble than they’re worth?

NEW YORK — One of the country’s most prominent news outlets has found itself in an embarrassing mess for hiring — and quickly firing — someone who isn’t a journalist in the first place.

NBC News’ brief tenure with former Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel has, among other things, illustrated the role of political contributors to television news, and the frustration many executives feel in adequately representing the Republican Party’s position in the Donald Trump era.

NBC News leadership believed it had secured a prize in McDaniel’s services to provide an insider perspective on the Republican campaign. Still, they were surprised and changed course Tuesday after network personalities like Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow objected to working with someone who had engaged in election disinformation.

These bosses, starting with NBC Universal chairman Cesar Conde, now face questions about their leadership and anger from Republicans, some of whom their journalists rely on as news sources heading into the presidential election.

“A news organization’s reputation will never improve by hiring a non-journalist employee,” said Mark Whitaker, former senior vice president of NBC News and Washington bureau chief. “But it can fall.”

In earlier times, televised political fights existed, such as Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick’s “point-counterpoint” segment on “60 Minutes” in the 1970s. Politics and journalism had their share of cross-pollination with figures like George Stephanopoulos and the late Tim Russert.

Still, the idea of ​​creating rosters of paid political contributors caught on with cable news. MSNBC, CNN and Fox News Channel are largely political conversation channels and look for experts to fill the time. News streaming has similar needs. Being available on call to give an opinion can be lucrative work; According to several reports, NBC agreed to pay McDaniel $300,000 per year.

The networks say they strive for political balance. Even NBC News, whose MSNBC cable channel appeals to liberals, has more than a dozen Republican contributors. But most of them — figures like former RNC chief Michael Steele, former Ohio Governor John Kasich and Bulwark founder Charlie Sykes — either predate Trump in their active political work or oppose him, or both.

Finding someone with a MAGA pedigree was harder. Former Trump chiefs of staff Reince Priebus and Mick Mulvaney had brief tenures at CBS News; Some CBS journalists privately objected to Mulvaney’s hiring. Priebus joined ABC News last year, where former Trump Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert is also a contributor.

Former Trump communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin works at CNN, along with ex-Trump campaign adviser David Urban and Mark Esper, a former secretary of defense in the Trump administration.

Many figures who have stepped outside Trump’s sphere of influence, such as Griffin, have turned against him. For some insiders and supporters, the simple act of becoming a network contributor makes you anti-MAGA. Even a generally reliable Trump defender like Kayleigh McEnany, among a handful of former administration officials like Mike Pompeo now on the Fox News payroll, has been criticized by her ex-boss as insufficiently loyal.

A Trump supporter must ask himself whether it is worth constantly feeling outnumbered and defensive on television and being forced to answer for every wild statement the former president makes, Republican consultant Alex Conant said.

Networks, meanwhile, need contributors who can speak with authority and go beyond the talking points, says Mark Lukasiewicz, a former NBC executive and now dean of Hofstra University’s communications school.

“Journalists in many newsrooms are starting to think more about the stakes, about the cost of providing a large audience and a platform to someone who doesn’t fundamentally believe in a system that allows the existence of that platform,” Lukasiewicz said . “I think there is a higher bar for someone who is on the payroll of a journalistic institution than for someone who interviews you.”

If publicly supporting, or at least not objecting to, Trump lying about a rigged 2020 election is a litmus test for a job as a network contributor — well, that would eliminate a lot of Republicans.

“To remain true to itself, the MAGA movement must practice election denial, minimize the events of January 6, and treat the news media as an object of hate to point it out,” said Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University and author of the article . Pressthink blog. “Extending the hand of welcome is simply too expensive for any self-respecting newsroom with a public service charter, as NBC learned this week.”

Networks should retire this category of contributors and move to a system that relies on their own journalists and vetted, unpaid experts, he said. He has no expectations: in reality, they rarely compete by standing out on their own in this way.

NBC’s Conde made it clear that while McDaniel didn’t work out, the principle behind her hiring stands. The network remains committed to seeking diverse viewpoints and will “redouble our efforts” to seek such voices, he said in the internal memo announcing her resignation. Whether that will calm Republicans is uncertain at best.

Some personalities who publicly objected to McDaniel at NBC News, such as “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, said they don’t object to expressing conservative views, but draw the line at people who actively tried to influence the 2020 election. undermine.

That’s not a nuance that many Republicans noticed. In its failure, an attempt to make NBC News more inviting had the opposite effect.

“For Republicans who already think NBC is biased, this confirms everything,” Conant said.

Trump has tried to implicate NBC’s parent company, Comcast, in posts on his Truth Social platform.

“These sick people at MSDNC basically run NBC, and it doesn’t seem like Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts can do anything about it,” he wrote. There is no public indication that Conde and his management team have lost Comcast’s support.

Still, the aftermath has increased public attention on Conde and his management team: Rebecca Blumenstein, president of NBC News; MSNBC President Rashida Jones; and Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president for politics.

Among the questions: Why, during two full days of NBC and MSNBC journalists and anchors publicly condemning McDaniel’s hiring, has no one in management come forward to explain the motivations behind it? The Washington Post asked questions Wednesday about Jones’ role in recruiting the former Republican leader.

Margaret Sullivan, executive director of the Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University, wrote in the Guardian that NBC “could earn itself a lot of goodwill and recover from this blunder” by issuing a public apology.

There was no comment from NBC News on Thursday.

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David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.