Howard Kurtz reacts to Chuck Todd apology: ‘Lame explanation,’ suspicious about media mistakes
‘Media Buzz’ host Howard Kurtz reacts to NBC’s Chuck Todd apologizing for airing misleading clip of Attorney General William Barr.
Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz reacted on Thursday to NBC News anchor Chuck Todd’s on-air apology for what was described as a deceptively edited clip of Attorney General William Barr, calling his explanation “lame.”
“It’s good that Chuck Todd apologized for this absolutely egregious error,” Kurtz said on “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday.
“I don’t think it’s being well received in the White House,” The “Media Buzz” host went on to say. “The president has called for Chuck Todd’s firing over this.”
Todd faced criticism for a clip of Barr over his defense of the Justice Department's (DOJ's) push to drop the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
"I want to take a moment to talk about something that occurred on Sunday's edition of 'Meet the Press,'" Todd said Tuesday during his weekday MSNBC program. "During the program, we had a sound bite from a CBS News interview with Attorney General Bill Barr. In the bite that we aired and commented on, Mr. Barr was asked about how he thinks the history of his decision to end the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn will be written. Mr. Barr answered, 'History is written by the winner so it largely depends on who's writing the history.' In the full version of the interview and transcript, he went on to say, 'But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law.'"
Todd claimed that his Sunday program did not make the "edit" but that it simply saw the edited quote before seeing the full quote.
"Now, we did not edit that out. That was not our edit. We didn't include it because we only saw the shorter of two clips that CBS did air," Todd explained. "We should have looked at both and checked for a full transcript, a mistake I wish we had not made and one that I wish I had not have [sic] made. The second part of the attorney general's answer would have put it in the proper context and had I seen that part of the interview, I would not have framed the conversation the way I did."
NBC'S CHUCK TODD MAKES ON-AIR APOLOGY OVER BOTCHED BARR QUOTE, CLAIMS 'THAT WAS NOT OUR EDIT'
He added: "I am obviously very sorry for that mistake. We strive to do better going forward.
“I have to focus on how lame the explanation was because as you heard Todd say, his staff said they only looked at the shorter CBS clip and not the longer CBS clip and hadn’t even bothered to check the full transcript,” Kurtz said reacting to Todd’s apology.
“This wasn’t breaking news,” he pointed out. “The CBS interview with the attorney general had taken place a couple of days earlier, so the most benign explanation would be that it was sheer journalistic sloppiness.”
Kurtz went on to say that he is “a little suspicious of that” because “these media mistakes always seem to go against Donald Trump and his team.”
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Todd's remarks came after NBC acknowledged the error when Barr spokesperson Kerri Kupec called out the anchor for "deceptively editing" the attorney general's remarks.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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