What NBC’s Ronna McDaniel debacle reveals about the state of journalism today

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The word broke on March 26 that NBC News was reversing its decision to hire former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel as a political commentator. MSNBC hosts across the schedule broke out into frenzied denunciations of whichever executive who thought that McDaniel should be paid to speak anywhere on this hypnotically/robotically anti-Trump network.

In one of her typical half-hour jeremiads, Rachel Maddow compared McDaniel to a mobster and a pickpocket. "You wouldn't – you wouldn't hire a wise guy, you wouldn't hire a made man, like a mobster, to work at a DA's office, right? You wouldn't hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener. And so, I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable. And I hope they will reverse their decision."

There was no need for NBC News to hire McDaniel. One can look at the election results during her tenure at the RNC and question her expertise at winning elections. But this mobster talk underlines once again that MSNBC is not a "news" channel. It's a hyperbole channel, constantly fearmongering its audience that the end times are near for democracy.

'THE VIEW' CO-HOSTS ARGUES MEDIA DOESN'T NEED TO COVER BOTH SIDES AFTER NBC CUT TIES WITH MCDANIEL

Maddow claimed this hiring wasn't about Republicans vs. Democrats. It's about "bad actors trying to use the rights and privileges of democracy to end democracy." There are no "fact-checkers" who will get in the way of this talk. Maddow is like Bluto in "Animal House" saying, "when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor." Facts don't matter. Rallying your audience is all that matters.

This was the essence of Maddow's rant: "I want to associate myself with all my colleagues both at MSNBC and at NBC News