Viewers of NBC’s Today have been privy to an employee revolving door as of late, and host Savannah Guthrie appears to be taking rapid hirings and firings in stride while possibly keeping an eye on the exit sign.
In an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on April 3, Savannah, 52, joked that she’s leaving NBC for rival CBS, alluding to Today Show network’s rapid hiring and firing of former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as her motivation.
After asking Stephen, 59, if there were “any openings” at CBS – the network that The Late Show calls home – Savannah said that she’d spill the details on what happened between closed doors “as boring as possible.”
“It was an unpleasant few days at [NBC] … no question about it,” Savannah said of the environment surrounding Rona, 51, and the tumultuous week that involved her being both hired and fired by NBC. “I was not in the know, I knew nothing about it. The bosses made the decision, they reversed that decision, they acknowledged the mistake and we moved on.”
Ronna, a controversial figure in Republican politics due to her defense of Donald Trump and his claims surrounding the validity of the 2020 election, was hired by NBC in March. Less than a week later, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde announced in a memo to NBC staff that the network would be cutting ties with the former RNC chair and apologized to staffers who felt uncomfortable with her initial hiring as an on-air political contributor.
“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal,” Conde wrote in the memo, before adding that he remained committed to including “voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”
A close friend of Ronna’s maintained that that RNC leader – who had stepped down from her role with the organization just two weeks prior – was not informed of NBC’s decision personally but rather found out via media reports. In addition to her firing at NBC, Ronna was also dropped by her agents at Creative Artists Agency.
As for Savannah, she maintained while speaking to Stephen that the inclination to hire commentators from across the political spectrum is beneficial, but the execution in Ronna’s case was lacking.
“I think the instinct to try to have a diversity of opinions and a diversity of perspectives and voices as we cover an election is the right instinct,” she said. “It’s complex and it’s made more complex by the politics that we have right now. … In mainstream media, we need to include an array of voices, but there’s a line, and the line is truth. The line is facts. The line is you have to be someone upholding our democracy. That is to me where the line is.”
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