With enemies like these, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus doesn’t need friends.
Ever since the RNC issued an ultimatum on Monday to NBC and CNN to either pull their planned productions about Hillary Clinton or risk losing the rights to broadcast GOP presidential debates in 2016, Priebus has drawn unlikely support from a liberal columnist, a media watchdog group and a prominent Democrat.
Who are these strange bedfellows? Let’s review.
Leo Hindery
When Priebus made an appearance Monday on CNBC to discuss the demands, Democratic businessman Leo Hindery declared that the “earth just stopped spinning on its axis” because he found himself in agreement with the RNC. The RNC was quick to tout Hindery’s remarks on one of its blogs.
“You know, I am as much a Democrat as Reince is a Republican. It is simply wrong to do this. I would have an attack if I thought a Rick Santorum documentary was being run, a bi-op was being run on one of the networks. I think it is inappropriate as a run-up,” Hindery, the former CEO of AT&T Broadband, said.
Media Matters for America
As one of the leading critics of conservative media, MMFA directs much of its scrutiny on the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
But the founder of the liberal nonprofit, David Brock, backed the RNC’s demands, writing in letters send Tuesday to top executives at NBC and CNN that the productions raise “too many questions about fairness and conflicts of interest ahead of the 2016 election.”
Maureen Dowd
Dowd, the left-leaning but contrarian columnist for The New York Times, wrote Wednesday that, although Priebus “says a lot of goofy things,” he has legitimate gripes about the Hillary productions.
“Films can dramatically alter the way famous people are viewed, making them cooler, more glamorous, more sympathetic — and the reverse,” she wrote. “Clever filmmakers can offer up delicious soufflés of propaganda and storytelling, putting a new imprint on the historical record.”
Chuck Todd
The RNC’s debate demands probably received the biggest boost on Thursday morning, when one of NBC’s own expressed misgivings with the networks’ planned miniseries, which will star Oscar nominee Diane Lane in the role of Clinton. Chuck Todd, NBC News political director and an MSNBC host, said it doesn’t matter if there’s a “firewall” between the network’s entertainment and news divisions.
“This is why this miniseries is a total nightmare for NBC News because, you know, we know there’s this giant firewall, we know we have nothing to do with it, we know that we’d love probably to be as critical or whatever it is going to be, if it comes out,” Todd lamented. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
