NBC host Chuck Todd on Sunday pushed back against New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu's suggestion that all news networks lie to their viewers like Fox News did after then-President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
During an interview on Meet the Press, Todd asked Sununu about what News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch could do to regain trust in his network that was lost when on-air personalities lied about the election being stolen from Trump by hacked Dominion voting machines.
"Are you at all concerned you can have an honest conversation with Fox viewers?" Todd asked.
"Oh, I don't think it's just Fox," the governor opined. "I mean, I'll put them in there, but all of media, all of television media, and everyone has to own a little bit of the lack of trust, the lack of accountability."
"It's okay to get something wrong in the news, but you've got to come back and own it. And whether it's Fox or CNN or MSNBC or, you know, whatever, everyone just has to own it," he added.
Todd pressed: "Intentionally lying to viewers, though, that to me seemed to cross the line. You can make a mistake, but that wasn't a mistake. So explain to me that."
But Sununu doubled down.
"I'm not defending anybody because I think you're all in the same basket," he said. "I really do. We can go to CNN when they talk, when they're going to ignore the Hunter Biden laptop story. We could talk about the virus coming, truly coming out of the lab in Wuhan. We could talk about a lot of different things. If you're not owning that you misrepresented the story, whether it was intentional or not, everybody does it."
Todd couldn't let Sununu's remark go without a comment.
"At NBC News, you make a mistake like that, you would lose your job. I know that here for what it's worth," the host noted.
Editor's note (Frances Langum):
