OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
NBC and MSNBC are making a change in their line-up involving longtime host Chuck Todd.
Officials for the networks said Todd’s “Meet the Press Daily” is being shifted to a streaming-only option for viewers, adding that the show’s name will be changed to “Meet the Press Now.”
His program on MSNBC will be replaced by “MSNBC Reports” featuring veteran anchor Chris Jansing.
Todd closed out his final show with a message to viewers.
“I want to take a moment to remind people of our mission here: to share with you what you need to know about what’s happening in Washington and in American politics, and most importantly, explaining why it happened, and why it matters to you,” he said.
“I’ve always been a big believer in finding new ways to reach new audiences. So we know where you are. And putting Meet the Press on NBC News NOW, five days a week, is at the forefront of where we want to be in streaming news. It was a no-brainer,” he added.
“We know you are here because you’re simply looking for smart, honest news and analysis. That’s all. Which has been, and always will be the driving force behind Meet the Press,” he claimed.
Critics would likely disagree with his ‘honest’ and ‘smart’ claims. For instance, in late December 2018, Todd announced that he would no longer feature any guests who questioned claims that humans are driving so-called “climate change.”
“This morning, we’re going to do something that we don’t often get to do: dive in on one topic,” Todd said after showing video clips of weather incidents throughout the year. He added that climate change is “a literally earth-changing subject that doesn’t get talked about this thoroughly, at least on television news.”
”Just as important as what we are going to do is what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The earth is getting hotter and human activity is a major cause, period,” he claimed.
“We’re not going to give time to climate deniers,” Todd added. “The science is settled even if political opinion is not.”
Not true, according to actual climatologists and other scientists.
An Obama-era physicist is pushing back on long-standing claims that human activity is causing harmful changes to global weather patterns and other phenomena, insisting that the data simply don’t bear out those assertions.
In an interview on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today,” Dr. Steve Koonin, an Obama-era physicist who served as undersecretary of Energy for Science from 2009-2011 and is currently the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, said the U.S. media and political leaders have routinely engaged in manipulating data on climate in order to advance a political agenda.
The claim that human activity is causing more floods, droughts, and other weather events “is a fiction of the media and the politicians who would like to promote that notion,” Koonin told the host.
The MIT-educated scholar discussed his findings which he published in a recently released book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”
“When you look at the actual data, and what I’ve written in the book is a summary of the data and the official science, as written by the IPC, the UN, and the U.S. government, there are no detectable human influences on hurricanes over almost a century,” Koonin said.
“The heatwaves in the U.S. are no more common today than they were in 1900, and the warmest temperatures have not gone up in the last 60 years,” the scientist continued.
As for Todd, NBC News president Noah Oppenheim said in a statement: “NBC News is the leader in streaming news. Since our launch, we’ve been committed to delivering the best of NBC News’ journalism, free, to streaming audiences everywhere.”
“Chuck was one of the first broadcast anchors to see the massive potential of streaming and bringing Meet the Press’s daily franchise to NBC News NOW reinforces the platform’s status as the destination for news on streaming,” Oppenheim added.
