Handwringing By Chuck Todd

Here's Chuck Todd at CNN:

CHUCK TODD: Tonight, I'm way more obsessed than usual. In fact, there's an issue that quite literally is keeping me up at night. I don't usually like navel-gazing about the press. I don't feel sorry for us, ever. But we in the media are facing a challenge unlike any before. It used to be we believed presidents when they talked, or we believed they had facts to back up their statements. Lying got them in trouble. It got one president impeached. It forced another to resign.

So what do you do when the president-elect is willing to spread outright falsehoods, like the charge that voter fraud cost him the popular vote, and claims somehow the media is covering this up? What do you do when he thinks any unflattering coverage is, by definition, unfair? What do you do when he tells top national reporters that half of them are blatantly dishonest at the job that they do, and he does it to them in their face? What do you do when millions choose to believe fake news stories simply because they like what they hear, and the candidate they like retweets those stories? What do you do when half the country believes one set of facts and the other half believes another set of something?

In short, what do you do when millions simply don't want to believe the media anymore, and now have a candidate or a president that will encourage them not to do that?

Well, here's one answer: We're going to keep working at what we do. We're going to try to distinguish real from fake, fact from fiction, news from propaganda. And we're always going to be fair. We've always been fair. Here's something we won't do, is somehow "balance" facts.

You and your network had nothing to do with it, right, Chuck? You weren't taking part as this circus developed; you were just silent observers?