NBC reverses decision to hire Ronna McDaniel after on-air backlash

Amid a chorus of on-air protest from some of the network’s biggest stars, NBC announced Tuesday night that former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel will no longer be joining the network as a paid contributor.

In a memo, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staff that he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”

The network had only just announced four days earlier that they were bringing McDaniel on board to provide “expert insight and analysis” on politics. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” one NBC News executive told staff at the time.

But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of former president Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her from a role in their news divisions.

And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.

The outrage over her appointment was indicative of the larger struggle television networks have faced in hiring pundits to offer a pro-Trump perspective without running afoul of both the audience and their own employees.

CBS News staff, for example, raised objections when the network hired Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney — another promoter of the former president’s fact-free claims — as a contributor two years ago. He ultimately appeared on-air only sporadically and left the network after about a year.

“To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage,” co-host Mika Brzezinski said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.”

“We welcome Republican voices,” prime-time host Joy Reid added later that day. “The reality is: This isn’t a difference of opinion. She literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan.”

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