NBC Nightly News

Last night I was watching NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and one part of the newscast especially caught my attention.  They were covering the recent debacle of the U.S. government threatening another “shutdown” if they cannot reach a deal on the budget.  This threat of a shutdown has happened before, and a tone of exasperation seemed to be very potent in correspondent Chuck Todd’s reporting of the news and in his interaction with the anchor, Brian Williams.  This struck me as interesting because it was obvious they were trying to relate to the audience, a public who is fed up with the current sluggishness of the U.S. government to get seemingly anything done.  However, I was a bit surprised how they were so cavalierly illustrating their own bias against the ineptitude of the government because usually these newscasts seem to be pretty even-handed and illustrate both sides without any sort of bias.  This made me wonder if having such a tone should really be acceptable in straight-journalism newscasts.  I understand why they did it; almost everyone is feeling frustrated with the government at the moment and they want to get more ratings by seeming attuned to the public’s frustrations as opposed to being an outdated, just-the-facts type news organization.  However, I wonder if this is appropriate in the sense that it does not corroborate with the traditional definition of journalism.