Oh it’s on. “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd appeared on Huff Post Live, during which he called out the Huffington Post on its use of clickbait.
Todd lamented the fact that television news was driven so much by ratings and viewership, but noted that it applied to Internet news as well. ” Look at the way the Internet is measured now by clickbait. Clickbait is doing more to bring down the perception of the news media than anything else.” Todd said. “Because television is following clickbait.”
That’s when it got a little personal. “There’s a lot of Internet sites, present company included, that are guilty of it.” Todd added. “And I think it hurts.” (RELATED: Huffington Post Fall For ‘Obvious Hoax’ Video)
Host Marc Lamont Hill was diplomatic about the charge. “I think the challenge is always to balance journalistic integrity — objective reporting, advancing stories — with other things. HuffPost, we make the claim obviously to have all sorts of articles, all sorts of sites.”
But whether by coincidence or in retaliation, he immediately began pressing Todd on alleged journalistic misdeeds from his own employer. “On example, this week — and NBC’s gotten a lot of criticism for it — has been the Bill Cosby coverage. Some people have said that NBC has not covered as an news outlet the Bill Cosby allegations and controversy sufficiently, at that may be connected to their own economic investment in Bill Cosby.”
“I have never in any story I’ve covered where NBC has corporate interest, I’ve never run into that problem,” Todd replied, chalking it up to “outside people looking to create a stir.”
Watch the interview here (beginning at 26:30):