NBC's Todd: Clinton Miniseries 'A Total Nightmare' For Us

August 8th, 2013 11:37 AM

It's not just conservatives who think it's a horrible idea for NBC to run a Hillary Clinton miniseries before the 2016 election. Network anchor Chuck Todd worries about the perception of bias, even as he insists that there's a tall wall of separation between his network's news  and entertainment divisions.

Reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake in an August 8 Post Politics entry:

[N]ew NBC miniseries about Hillary Rodham Clinton a “total nightmare” for the network’s news division — adding another voice to the increasing backlash against the project.

“This is why this miniseries is a total nightmare for NBC News,” Todd said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We know there’s this giant firewall. We know that 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 added, though, that regardless of whether the Clintons or Republicans are upset with the portrayal, NBC News will pay the price.

“No matter what, only we are going to own it, because people are going to see the peacock, and they see NBC, and they see NBC News, and they think, ‘Well, they can’t be that separate,’ ” Todd said


Other voices on the left, notably the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, have said that Reince Preibus, the RNC Chairman who’s been critical of the proposed series, “has a point.”

On the other hand, Postie Philip Rucker, along with his colleague Blake, wrote a rather silly excerpt in their August 6 piece about the “race” to “define” Hillary’s possible 2016 candidacy.  When the miniseries was brought up, Rucker and Blake wrote, “the RNC position assumes that the NBC and CNN projects will be favorable to Clinton, but that is no guarantee. Neither she nor her advisers will have any control over her portrayal, leaving the would-be candidate vulnerable at a time when she has no campaign in which to define herself.” 

Right, because a network that hired Chelsea Clinton will produce a series critical of her.  Hey, Phil, reality is on hold for you on line two.