NBC’s “Meet the Press” is focusing on “alternative facts” Sunday just days after moderator Chuck Todd became a trending Twitter topic for a recent interview in which he admitted he was initially “naive” about the campaign of “disinformation” he said has come from the Trump administration and top Republicans.
The show’s team is splitting the hour up into sections: “Politics and Journalism in an Era of ‘Alternative Facts’” with New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and the Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron; “Anatomy of a Lie” with NBC News national security analyst Clint Watts; and “Borrowing the Russian Disinformation Playbook” with New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.
The show will also include a roundtable with Recode co-founder and editor-at-large Kara Swisher, MSNBC anchor Joshua Johnson, New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser and American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Matthew Continetti.
A representative for NBC News did not offer further comment.
Todd’s recent Rolling Stone interview revived questions about how the media handles factually incorrect statements from news figures, particularly in live broadcasts like “Meet the Press.”
When asked about Sean Spicer’s lies during his time as the White House’s press secretary, Todd confessed he “really believed they wouldn’t do this” at the time. He called his 2017 line of thinking “just absurdly naive in hindsight.”
In blog posts and tweet, thinkers the likes of New York University’s Jay Rosen and the New York Times’ Wajahat Ali questioned whether Todd was fit for the role if he wasn’t prepared to recognize and call out disinformation.