Chuck Todd, the new moderator for Meet the Press, was recently interviewed by the Breitbart News Network. Part I was published on Thursday, with Part II scheduled for Friday.

"This is a step in the rehabilitation of my business." That's how the 12th moderator of NBC's Meet the Press opened a wide-ranging phone interview with Breitbart News

He admitted that the media is biased toward liberals (though believes this bias is more cultural than political) and acknowledged that having political operatives cross over into media roles is not good.

Todd conceded that the media did a “poor job covering the recession” as the interview explored this topic in some detail:

BNN: You look at polls and for six years the public's number one issue has been the economy. But the media's been all about guns, gays, the NFL, and a local crime in Florida… Those of us old enough to remember the Reagan and Bush years -- let's just say that this just feeds into our distrust of the media. We do look at it as the media covering for Obama.

CT: I've got some things coming up in a couple weeks where I'm trying to show the geographic disparity of the economic recovery. Economists look at the numbers and say, "This is a sign of a healing economy," but it really depends on where you live. If you live on the coasts, things are going well. If you live near a big city, things are going well. It's in the middle of the country -- it's not just jobs, but good jobs, and will my kid have a job.

BNN: Doesn’t it come down to policy. One thing that needs to be said after four or five years is that President Obama's economic policies have pretty much failed.

CT: When do you judge that, though? A decade later? When do you know the answer?

BNN: I'm basing it on history. It took Reagan roughly two to three years to get us out. It took Bush [43] and Clinton maybe two years [referring to the 1992 and 2000 recessions], which were shallower recessions. But what Reagan inherited was just as bad as what Obama inherited. The Reagan policies created a million jobs in one month. Now we're six years into Obama's policies. At what point, for the good of the country, do we admit Obama's policies have failed?

CT: It's always been: "This is going to be the year the economy accelerates," and every time you think the economy is stepping on the gas, something trips it up. I think we're going to know in six to nine months. That's when a judgment will start to be made.

BNN: So you think Obama has six to nine months.

CT: Well, let's see. This had been a fairly good year on the job creation front until we hit August.

BNN: If you compare it to past recoveries, it hasn't really been a good year.

CT: Correct. (snip)

CT: One thing I think we can agree on is that we in the media have not covered this economy and economic recovery very well. If I have a small goal, it's to do that better. I now have a platform where I can spend real time on a story.

Huh?

Todd (1) admitted the economic recovery has not been good, (2) that the media has not done a good job covering the economy, buuuuuuuuuuuuuut (3) he thinks we need to give Obama more time. More than 6 years, apparently, in order to really be able to judge.

Okey-dokey.

But should anyone think I’m being too hard on Todd for that exchange (after all, he did seem so earnest and full of good intentions to be an unbiased journalist), he lost no time proving he is just another lefty shill as he covered the story of Holder stepping down. The National Review Online reports (video link, here):

The host of NBC’s Meet the Press considers resigning attorney general Eric Holder — who once proudly declared himself an “activist attorney general,” called America a “nation of cowards” about race and took heat from his own White House for pursuing politically sensitive initiatives –  ”a very non-political person.”

“He did a lot of the tough stuff that you would say, ‘Hey, the attorney general has to do tough stuff, this is not a forgiving job, you have to do tough stuff,’” Chuck Todd told MSNBC’s Tamron Hall on Thursday. “But, what’s interesting about him, he is a very non-political person. And I think people used to mistakenly think that this guy was this long-time political operative who happened to be an attorney general. That’s not him at all.”

So much for rehabilitation.