IT’S COME TO THIS:

Todd writes, “the campaign to convince the world that all media should be assumed to be biased politically unless proved otherwise.” Well, yes. As long as the journalist discloses where his bias lies, this isn’t a problem. Or as Sean Davis wrote in 2015: Sorry, Chuck Todd, But Reporters Are Not The Referees Of Politics.

And that fact is exactly why Chuck Todd so desperately wants to be viewed as a referee, rather than an observer who just happens to have a camera in front of him and a media operation behind him. He wants you to think he’s the one calling balls and strikes. He wants you to think he’s the expert on the rules. He wants to be the one to tell you what’s out of bounds and what isn’t. And the reason he wants that is because he, like so many other reporters (he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only political reporter to have significant ties to the Democratic Party), has skin in the game.

Todd worked for the presidential campaign of former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. His wife is a long-time Democratic campaign consultant. They very clearly have skin in the game. Major League Baseball would never hire a George Steinbrenner staffer to stand behind the plate for a Yankees game against the Red Sox. It would be absurd to suggest that an arrangement like that would be appropriate. Fans would be outraged. But Todd would have you believe that this would not just be totally kosher, but totally normal.

In the interest of full disclosure, I also have a political background. I was a congressional staffer for several Republicans. I worked on a Republican presidential campaign. There are two big differences between Todd and me, though: 1) I am completely up-front about my biases, my background, and my ideological and political preferences, and 2) I am under no delusion that I’m a neutral arbiter. When I make assertions, I do my absolute best to back them up with verifiable evidence. And I certainly do not make any claims that I’ve been bestowed (by whom, Chuck Todd never makes clear) with some sort of official role in determining who is following The Rules™ and who isn’t.

See how easy that is?

Note also that Todd is writing in the Atlantic, which after the Kevin Williamson debacle in 2018, has quite neatly identified its collective ideology.