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Tag: Andrea Mitchell

  • David Gregory in line to succeed Tim Russert on ‘Meet the Press’

    David Gregory is in talks with NBC News to become the next moderator of “Meet the Press,” the popular Sunday news show.

    If the deal is consummated, the baby-faced White House correspondent and fill-in “Today” show host will face an enormous challenge to fill the shoes of the late Tim Russert, a widely respected journalist who died last June of a heart attack.

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    NBC has insisted there is no deal yet. But the Washington Post reported today that the network could announce a decision as early as Sunday, when Tom Brokaw is expected to end his temporary stint as moderator with an interview with President-elect Barack Obama.

    Other leading contenders for the job have included NBC News correspondents Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell, PBS host Gwen Ifill, MSNBC host Chris Matthews and former Nightline host Ted Koppel, who recently ended a long-term contract with Discovery.

    One reason the 38-year-old Gregory may have pulled ahead of the competition is his long-term value to NBC. He is often described as its first choice to one day succeed Matt Lauer as host of “Today.”

    “Today” is the most profitable show on television, and therefore, hugely significant to Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC’s parent, NBC Universal, according to the New York Times. That show is also personally important to Zucker, a former executive producer who led “Today” to its current ratings’ dominance.

    Gregory, the son of a Broadway producer, has been the network’s chief White House correspondent throughout the years of the Bush administration, where he had a reputation as a relentless questioner who would engage in verbal sparring with White House press secretaries when he felt his questions were given short shrift.

    After Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting companion, for instance, Gregory admonished press secretary Scott McClellan: “Don’t tell me you’re giving us complete answers when you’re not actually answering the question.”

    On another occasion, Gregory said: “Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.” Gregory later apologized to McClellan.

    Yet he also maintained relationships with those he covered. He famously celebrated his 30th birthday aboard George W. Bush’s campaign plane eight years ago – with the cake provided by the candidate.

    Bush nicknamed the 6-foot-5 reporter “Stretch” early in his tenure and later downgraded him to “Little Stretch,” according to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz.

    It hasn’t hurt Gregory that he is well-connected to parts of the Washington power establishment through his wife, Beth Wilkinson, a prominent attorney. The two met when Gregory was covering the Oklahoma City bombing as a reporter and Wilkinson was serving as prosecutor on the case.

    Besides having worked as a Justice Department prosecutor, Wilkinson is a former Fannie Mae executive, who resigned from the beleaguered mortgage agency Sept. 19 after the government assumed control. (She had been recruited to help the mortgage agency rebuild its relationship with regulators after a series of accounting scandals in 2006.)

    Among the visitors attending the baby shower for the couple’s first child was then-Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff whom Wilkinson worked with at the law firm Latham & Watkins as well as at the Justice Department.

    Gregory attended American University in Washington, where he also began working as a journalist. As an 18-year-old freshman, he cut a deal with the ABC affiliate in Tucson to use him as a Washington correspondent. He joined NBC as a Chicago-based correspondent in 1996.

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    • Michael Moore defends the car guys, sort of

      December 4, 2008 at 5:18pm

      It wasn’t so long ago that Michael Moore devoted an entire movie to nailing the CEO of a Big Three automaker.

    • NBC’s Andrea Mitchell navigates tricky path in covering financial crisis

      NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell is taking some heat for her reporting on the unfolding financial crisis.

      Mitchell, a veteran NBC reporter who is married to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, has played a lead role in covering the 2008 presidential campaign. In the last week, she has also participated in the network’s coverage of the growing turmoil in financial markets and its political fallout.

      The Columbia Journalism Review argued yesterday that Mitchell is heading into treacherous territory, even while praising her as a consummate professional, “who knows what conflict of interest is – and how to avoid not only its appearance, but also, one hopes, its effects.”

      In most cases, a reporter would be barred from covering a story in which he or she has a personal stake, or which involved a member of her immediate family.

      But the boundaries of this one are difficult to navigate since the crisis has multiple economic and political dimensions, and has become interwoven with the 2008 presidential race, which Mitchell is covering.

      CJR argues that NBC should err on the side of too much, rather than too little caution in drawing the lines because Greenspan, “by virtue of his nearly-nineteen-year chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board, is, to some extent, culpable in the crisis we’re facing.”

      Greenspan stepped down as chairman on Jan. 31, 2006.

      In particular, CJR criticizes Mitchell for veering from straight reportage to analysis yesterday in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” (italicized quotes from CJR):

      Once there’s some stability in the market, then the real value of these mortgage loans will become apparent, and then people will get back in.

      And, by the way, there’s some really interesting data that is just beginning to surface in these hearings. Lockhart, the regulator of Fannie and Freddie, testified to this yesterday, largely overlooked. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal, an op-ed, by a Columbia professor and by Peter Wallason, who has done some advising for McCain, but is a former treasury official and a former White House counsel. And what they said is that there was a domino effect.

      What happened was, the Bush Administration started threatening to regulate Fannie and Freddie and to take away some of their special, implicit benefits where they got cheap money, where they got special implicit subsidies in their interest rates, they could get money at a lower cost. And during that period, they had to prove – and Congress was pressuring them – both parties – pressuring them to prove that they were fulfilling their commitment to low-income housing…. And all of a sudden, you saw a surge in what they were putting into these subprime loans. And it practically doubled in the last couple of years, in what they were putting into those subprime loans. This was between 2006, 2007 – that’s when you saw the big increase in bad loans. So there’s a lot of blame here to go all around, but they’ve got a lot of answers to deliver, as well.

      CJR asks whether this is objective historical analysis, or an effort on Mitchell’s part to at least partially absolve her husband of blame for the crisis.

      Another question that might be asked is whether Greenspan’s consulting work could pose other conflicts.

      Jossip, a website for women, was even more critical of Mitchell in a post entitled, “Should Andrea Mitchell Be, Like, Kicked Off NBC Entirely?”

      NBC News said in a statement today that it had no concerns about Mitchell’s reportage.

      “We make decisions about Andrea’s reporting on the current financial crisis on a day-to-day, case-by-case basis,” said Allison Gollust, senior vice president for communications. “There are countless aspects of the story that present absolutely no potential for conflict whatsoever.

      “In cases where we feel the focus of a given storyline may present a problem, we assign those stories to another correspondent. We are 100-percent comfortable with all of her reporting thus far.”