NBC's Clinton movie 'nightmare' for news division

NBC News chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday and said his company's decision to run a mini-series about possible 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was a "nightmare."

"This mini-series is a total nightmare for NBC News," Todd said. Although the news division is totally separate, Todd says the public won't necessarily make that distinction.

“People are going to see the peacock, and they see NBC, and they see NBC News, and they think, ‘Well, they can’t be that separate,’” Todd said.

"We know that we’d love probably to be as critical or whatever … but there’s nothing we can do about it and we’re going to only own the negative.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus already threatened to end an RNC partnership with NBC News for 2016 GOP presidential debates if they moved ahead with the project.

NBC News argued that the film is independent of them, produced by NBC Entertainment, or as Todd put it, "you know, guys on the West Coast."

“I don’t think there’s a real difference there," Priebus said. "The umbrella brand might suffer because of the decisions that are made."

Priebus this week made the same threat to CNN, which has planned a feature-length documentary on the life of the former Secretary of State. NBC's four-hour television mini-series stars Diane Lane as Clinton.

In letters to CNN President Jeff Zucker and NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt, Priebus called the projects "a thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election."