Decline and Fall of the Fani Willis Juggernaut?

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was touted as a mortal threat to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign with her election-interference indictments in Georgia. Now news is breaking that she had an affair with her special prosecutor and he’s not very qualified for the job. The networks hate this story, and some are skipping over it. 

Managing editor Curtis Houck joins the show to note The Washington Post offered a front-page story on Monday on the “embattled prosecutor” Nathan Wade that continued on to the entire back page (and there’s another front-pager on Friday).

So what about the TV news? ABC on Thursday night and CBS on Friday morning aired reports. NBC has not. Rich Noyes just noted these network evening shows aired 132 minutes of Fani Willis probe stories in 2023. Surely, inside their newsrooms, they are hiding their frustration that it looks like “the walls are closing in” on Willis more than on Trump. 

Taxpayer-funded media? PBS gave it 24 seconds on Thursday night, but gave eight minutes to former NPR anchor Michelle Norris and her book on race relations. NPR didn’t air a story, but Thursday night’s badly named All Things Considered did offer a four-minute story/press release on Vice President Kamala Harris “stepping up to address gun violence.”

On Twitter, the PBS NewsHour merely repeated a stilted Associated Press lede that sounded like a Willis press release: “Willis is accusing the estranged wife of a special prosecutor she hired of trying to obstruct her criminal election-interference case against Trump and others by seeking to question her in the couple’s divorce proceedings.” That avoids mentioning a “romantic relationship” between Willis and Wade that would be quite relevant to a divorce case. 

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