New NBC boss should prove she’s not just a ‘figurehead’ and come clean on quashed Paul Pelosi report, ex-exec says

The incoming new boss at NBC News has a chance to get off on the right foot by providing transparency to the network’s quashing of a bombshell report on what police discovered when they were initially dispatched to the home of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi where her husband Paul was bludgeoned last October.

Earlier this month, NBCUniversal announced that president Noah Oppenheim’s controversial tenure had come to an end, pulling the plug on his leadership and installing Rebecca Blumenstein, the former deputy managing editor at the New York Times who will inherit much of his responsibilities, a change that comes at a time of diminishing public confidence in the mainstream media.

As the new face at the top, Blumenstein will have an immediate opportunity to show that she isn’t merely a “figurehead” by coming clean about what the real problem was with the reporting of Miguel Almaguer who was yanked off the air after he contradicted the official narrative of what went down in Pacific Heights in the wee hours of the morning on October 28, 2022 when police arrived at the crime scene mere days before the crucial midterm elections.

A former senior NBC News executive told Fox News Digital that “Rebecca Blumenstein should hold NBC News to the higher standards of her previous employers and reveal what was ‘wrong’ with Miguel Almaguer’s reporting on Paul Pelosi.”

On the morning that the 82-year-old investment guru returned to the couple’s San Francisco mansion after he was treated at the hospital for a fractured skull suffered during the bizarre incident, Almaguer reported that according to the cops, the victim did not act in a manner consistent with an emergency and that after greeting officers at the door, walked back into the foyer toward 42-year-old David DePape who then allegedly struck him in the head with a hammer.

The report was immediately scrubbed, being retracted with no explanation other than a vague statement about it not meeting standards after it went viral on social media soon thereafter, Almaguer was also scrubbed with the network banishing him from the airwaves, also with no explanation.

Embarrassed by Oppenheim’s “opaqueness” over the censorship of the report, the former senior NBC News executive told Fox News Digital that he “believes Blumenstein has a chance to prove she’s capable of restoring credibility at the Comcast-owned network.”

“Will she explain why Miguel’s suspension mysteriously ended? Rebecca needs to prove she’s more than just a figurehead with a bigger paycheck than the New York Times could afford,” the exec said.

Another person who believes that NBC News’ explanation of its retraction of Almaguer’s reportage has been “insufficient” is Jeffrey McCall, a professor of journalism at DePauw University.

“It’s understandable that NBC might not comment on Almaguer’s personnel situation or his supposed suspension. But NBC does owe it to news consumers to explain what was perhaps incorrect about the original report that caused it to be taken down. Otherwise, viewers are left to wonder if perhaps the story was removed because it was too accurate, in a sense.” McCall told Fox News Digital.

“Or, viewers could wonder if outside pressure caused the story to be removed. Any time a major news organization changes or removes a report because of standards problems, those standards need to be explained. That can be done without openly bashing Almaguer’s, but by simply explaining what particular aspects of the story caused the entire story to be canned,” he continued. “This incident involving Paul Pelosi is still rather confusing and NBC has added to that mystery with its lack of transparency.”

In another development in the strange tale that has largely disappeared from the news cycle, a San Francisco judge has sided with a coalition of media organizations by ruling that police bodycam footage from the Pelosi-DePape incident must be made public.

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Chris Donaldson

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