There are two shocking things about the statement Chuck Todd blurted out yesterday on Meet the Press, the flagship NBC News program he hosts.  One is that he said it, and the other is that he probably believes it.

The video is below.  Here is the relevant portion of the exchange between Todd and veteran columnist David Broder via Grabien:

I think one of the best things going in Donald Trump's favor— we know this— is the mainstream media. I hate to say it. I know I'm sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62% think the media is biased. So in other words, if you look at the approval ratings of Donald Trump versus the approval rating of the media—

(OVERTALK)

CHUCK TODD:

The conservative echo chamber created that environment. It's not— no. No. No. No. It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes created echo chamber.

DAVID BRODY:

Yeah.

CHUCK TODD:

So let's not pretend it's not anything other than that.

DAVID BRODY:

Well, hang on. Yes and no. Because remember, the independents are part of Donald Trump's base. And I think that is very important. A lot of times we say, "Republicans are Donald Trump's base." Not really. They're—

CHUCK TODD:

No. It's a separate Trump – it is a different version of the Republican Party.

DAVID BRODY:

But those Independents also distrust media. This is not just Republicans. It is many Americans across—

CHUCK TODD:

Oh, no. No. No. I take your point. I'm just saying it was a creation – it was a campaign tactic. It's not based in much fact.

This is profoundly revealing. He seems to agree with Kim Jong un and Josef Stalin that ordinary people are not capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction, so dissident voices are undesirable. Were the MSM's control over the news reaching the public as sweeping as that of communist tyrants able to seal off their nations, he thinks that the result would be trust of the sole voice being heard in the ideologically homogenous media.

While it is true that skepticism and disbelief remain invisible when a tyrant is powerful, dissent exists but is hidden, visible only in covert media, such as samizdat literature.  The pre-Fox News landscape of network broadcasting didn't rely on political terror so much as a cloak of invisibility for conservative voices.  But the discontent and disbelief remained active and invisible to Todd and his colleagues in Washington and New York City.

As the late Charles Krauthammer quipped, Roger Ailes spotted a niche for a news network: the half of Americans who are not liberals.  Apparently, to Todd, they never existed, and they are now voicing discontent with the liberal media because they have been brainwashed by the 10 or 15 percent of the media that is not dogmatically liberal.

Watch the exchange here:

So long as denial remains the default position, distrust of media figures like Todd will only increase.