Chuck Todd, who served as moderator of the Sunday morning NBC News franchise “Meet the Press” from 2014 to 2023, announced to colleagues Friday morning that he is leaving the network.
Since handing the “Meet the Press” moderator baton to Kristen Welker, Mr. Todd has served as NBC’s chief political analyst.
“There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ‘pie in the sky’ to ‘near reality,’” Todd wrote in the memo. “So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment.”
Mr. Todd said he will keep his podcast, “The Chuck Toddcast,” and will bring it to a “new home soon.”
“We’re grateful for Chuck’s many contributions to our political coverage during his nearly two-decade career at NBC News and for his deep commitment to Meet the Press and its enduring legacy,” an NBC News spokesperson said in a statement. “We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”
Mr. Todd first joined NBC News in 2007 as political director. Since then, he has been one of NBC’s most prominent political journalists, and one who has embraced a variety of new media platforms.
In addition to his Sunday morning duties, Mr. Todd began hosting a daily MSNBC show in 2015 under the “Meet the Press” banner. In addition, he took on a streaming show on the NBC News Now platform in 2020. The network also launched a “Meet the Press” Film Festival.
Despite giving up his hosting duties, Mr. Todd remained an influential member of the network’s news division. So it carried weight when Todd was the first person at the network to call out his bosses for hiring former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a contributor in late March 2024. His comments ended up snowballing into a full-scale revolt among MSNBC talent, and the network ended up quickly reversing its decision to hire Ms. McDaniel.
In his memo, Mr. Todd made a critique of the mainstream media environment that NBC operates within, writing that “the media has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of viewers/listeners/readers.”
“The only way to fix this information eco system is to stop whining about the various ways the social media companies are manipulating things and instead roll up our collective sleeves and start with local,” he wrote. “National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report. People are craving community and that’s something national media or the major social media companies can’t do as well as local media.”
Mr. Todd is the latest prominent television news personality to leave their professional home in recent months. CNN journalist Jim Acosta announced his departure from the network Tuesday, after the departures of prominent CNN personalities Chris Wallace and Gloria Borger.
Mr. Todd also offered some advice for his NBC News colleagues.
“We can’t tolerate propagandists. But it doesn’t mean sticking your head in the sand either; if you ignore reality, you’ll miss the biggest story,” he wrote.
In that vein, Mr. Todd pushed back on calls to exclude Republicans who supported efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election from appearing on Sunday morning shows such as “Meet the Press.”
“Being a real political journalist isn’t about building a brand, it’s about reporting what’s happening and explaining why it’s happening and letting the public absorb the facts without judging them for coming to a different conclusion,” he wrote Friday. “If you do this job seeking popularity, or to simply be an activist, you are doing this job incorrectly.”
First Published: January 31, 2025, 8:05 p.m.
