After Ron­na, New Lefty Spin: Aren’t Paid Pun­dits ‘More Trou­ble Than They’re Worth’?

In the wake of NBC’s Ron­na McDaniel deba­cle, “main­stream” media reporters have begun to argue that par­ti­san pun­dits aren’t use­ful any more. We can’t ignore that this is a very use­ful spin if you want to pre­vent any more paid Repub­li­can con­trib­u­tors in this elec­tion cycle.
In The New York Times, reporter James Poniewozik set the tone:

Can you real­ly rely on well-con­nect­ed par­ti­sans to give you unvar­nished analy­sis about their once and per­haps future col­leagues? Would view­ers be bet­ter served by news net­works’ seek­ing out a wide range of voic­es than hear­ing pre­dictable takes from reg­u­lar pan­elists? Isn’t it bet­ter to leave the rep­u­ta­tion-laun­der­ing to Danc­ing With the Stars?

That show had a link to Poniewozik insist­ing Trump press sec­re­tary Sean Spicer should­n’t be allowed to “tap dance out of infamy.”
NPR media reporter David Folken­flik not­ed NBC exec­u­tive Cesar insist­ed they would “redou­ble our efforts to seek voic­es that rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent parts of the polit­i­cal spectrum.”(We won’t hol …