Commentary

NBC News president says his network does not do ‘advocacy journalism’ – so that’s a lie.

January 22, 2022 | | Print Article

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Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, NBC News president Noah Oppenheim (the same guy who willingly passed up the Harvey Weinstein story) has claimed that his “news” network doesn’t engage in “advocacy journalism.”

Speaking with the notoriously left-wing Poynter Institute this week, he effusively claimed that NBC News “as a whole,” including “everything that falls under the NBC News umbrella,” is fair, balanced and non-partisan.

“NBC News proper as a whole — everything that falls under the NBC News umbrella — we are ferociously defending the traditional approach to journalism. We’re ferociously defending the idea that it’s possible to hold the middle ground and be objective and nonpartisan. That’s our mission,” Oppenheim told the Poynter Institute.

“When we go and interview a national figure, whether it’s Vice President Harris or if it had been Vice President Pence three years ago, we’re going to go into each of those interviews with the exact same mentality, which is these are the folks who are running our country. They need to be held to account. What are the toughest questions that we should be asking in order to accomplish that?” he asked.

Concluding his remarks, the NBC exec added, “I still believe in that old-school approach to journalism and being just as tough on both sides. And looking for truth and facts. Our mission is to illuminate and not advocate.”

His claims appear to be abjectly false.

Lester Holt, a “journalist” who hosts “NBC Nightly News,” argued quite plainly during an on-air rant last year that “fairness” in media — the idea, specifically, of giving each side of a political issue equal weight — is “overrated.”

“I think it’s become clear that fairness is overrated. … The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in. That the sun sets in the west is a fact. Any contrary view does not deserve our time or attention,” he said.

“I know that recent events assure that you won’t have to look far to find more current and relevant examples. I think you get my point,” Holt added.

His “point” appeared to be that dissenting views that belie the  Democrat Party’s orthodoxy should be ignored and/or silenced.

For instance, COVID dissenters have long argued that mask mandates are pointless because cloth masks do virtually nothing, and vaccine mandates are problematic because they discount natural immunity.

When Sen. Rand Paul, a licensed  doctor who’s also a COVID dissenter, was suspended by YouTube last August for arguing that “cloth masks don’t work,” here’s how NBC News reported the story:

NBC’s critics argue that a network that genuinely believed in traditional journalism wouldn’t have framed Paul’s suspension like this.

FYI, members of the establishment press have since admitted that, yes actually, cloth masks really don’t work.

Returning to the both sides issue, NBC recently hired notoriously left-wing “journalist” Yamiche Alcindor as a correspondent.

Yet critics say that Alcindor’s pro-left bias is so glaring that she sounds like a paid Democrat Party propagandist.

Take for instance how she portrayed President Joe Biden’s recent solo press conference, which has been widely panned by everybody, except of course for certified Democrat Party propagandists:

The entire so-called “NBC News umbrella” is brimming with additional examples of the network’s seemingly clear left-wing bias:

NBC News had a contractor allegedly attempt to follow the jurors in the Kyle Rittenhouse case in what critics claimed was an attempt to intimidate them.

NBC News framed the fall of Kabul in a way that drew attention to Republicans versus the Democrat administration that had orchestrated the collapse.

NBC News blamed white people for the phenomenon of Asians being victimized by black perpetrators.

NBC News omitted damaging information about “progressive” crime policies from a murder story.

NBC News edited a 911 call to cast doubt on the decision by an Ohio police officer to open fire on a 16-year-old teen who was about to stab another teen.

MSNBC hosts and guests habitually spout racist rhetoric about white people.

A veteran MSNBC anchor just quit his job specifically because of the “hyper-partisan news space” he’d worked in.

If this is what it means to be “looking for truth and facts” and to “illuminate and not advocate,” then it seems NBC News has decided to change the definition of truth, facts and advocacy.

Incidentally, changing dictionary definitions to fit one’s political ideology is also a common left-wing habit …

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

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