Looking bewildered, anchor Matt Lauer asked what just happened, and the staff in the New York studio could be heard laughing off camera. “Are these holy men, perhaps walking on top of the water?” he joked, not sure what else to say. Years later Jimmy Fallon asked Matt Lauer about the incident when he was a guest on The Tonight Show, but he didn’t want to talk about it and sarcastically said, “Thank you for bringing that up, James. I can’t wait to check my email when I get done with this show.”799
NBC has a history of deceptively editing people’s comments which causes them to be misrepresented to the audience. One of the most well-known examples of this is when they edited George Zimmerman’s call to 911 just before he got into an altercation with Trayvon Martin and ended up fatally shooting him. NBC’s version of the call had Zimmerman on the phone with the operator saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” but the actual conversation was Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”800
The dispatcher then replies: “OK, and this guy◦— is he black, white or Hispanic?”
Zimmerman then responds, “He looks black.”
Even The Washington Post, a far left newspaper, admitted, “No matter how you feel about Zimmerman, that bit of tape editing was unfair to the truth and to Zimmerman’s reputation.”801 Zimmerman sued the network for defamation with the lawsuit saying, “NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.”802
After Rudolf Guiliani gave an interview on Fox News about President Trump’s proposed travel restriction which would temporarily prevent immigrants from several countries plagued by terrorism from coming to the U.S., NBC aired a segment using an edited sound bite taken out of context in attempts to frame Guiliani’s statements as if this was a ‘Muslim ban’ when he specifically said it was not.803
NBC also deceptively edited comments by Reince Priebus on the same issue, again giving the false impression that Trump was proposing to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. when Priebus too said exactly the opposite. NBC’s story was titled “Reince Priebus on Muslim Registry: ‘Not Going to Rule Out Anything,’”804 based on an interview he had with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd. NBC also tweeted that when Reince was asked by Todd, “Can you rule out a registry for Muslims?” he answered, “I’m not going to rule out anything.” They actually cut his statement short to give readers the wrong impression, because he actually said, “I’m not gonna rule out anything, but we’re not going to have a registry based on a religion.”805
Surprisingly New York Times political correspondent Maggie Habernman called out NBC for the deceptive edit, saying that Reince’s actual quote indicates the opposite of what NBC framed it.806 Even BuzzFeed’s senior technology writer Charlie Warzel said it was an “irresponsible half-quote [without] even a link for context.”807
Perhaps Katie Couric, who worked as an anchor for NBC, learned the art of deceptively editing video clips in order to cast people in a false light there, because she was sued for twelve million dollars in 2016 by several people who claimed just that after they appeared in her anti-gun documentary Under the Gun.808
Trump once tweeted that NBC is the same fake news media that said there is ‘no path to victory’ for him during the election, and ridiculed them for pushing the phony Russian collusion stories.809 NBC got so defensive over people calling them ‘fake news’ due to their obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia ‘colluding’ with the Trump administration that Meet The Press host Chuck Todd and others put together an article titled “Four Reasons Why the Russia Story Isn’t Fake News.”810
Just one month after Donald Trump took the oath of office, NBC News produced a segment called “Dear Mr. President: Kids Talk Donald Trump” which showed a bunch of young kids voicing their fears about the new president.811 Instead of being just a cute segment of innocent kids asking questions about the presidency, it looked like a propaganda piece that North Korea would produce. Some of the statements the children made were: “Most of my family is black. I’m afraid that you’re gonna hurt some of us blacks.” “You are here, attempting to white-wash America.” “I don’t like your definition of American, because I don’t seem to fit within it,” and, “Some of my friends are really scared about you building a wall and the travel ban, because a lot of their families live in different places.”
It was clear the kids had no idea what they were talking about and their parents, who had to approve of their appearance, were behind the camera coaching them on what to say. The segment was widely denounced online for using children in an anti-Trump propaganda piece portrayed as ‘news’ by a major network.812
NBC actually had people dress up as Muslims and attend a NASCAR race in Virginia in order to attempt to spark negative reactions from the other attendees. NASCAR fans, as you probably are well aware of, are often stereotyped as racist rednecks, and so NBC thought they could easily find a few drunk hicks who would give dirty looks to the Muslims.813 When their stunt was discovered many people denounced NBC for violating journalistic ethics. “It is outrageous that a news organization of NBC’s stature would stoop to the level of going out to create news instead of reporting news,” said NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston.814 The segment never aired, likely because they didn’t get the negative reactions they had hoped for.
This is the same network that still employs Brian Williams, even after his admittedly false claims about being under enemy fire while covering the Iraq War.815 Perhaps they appreciate his ability to keep a straight face while mischaracterizing things and framing stories in a false light. President Trump can do nothing right in the eyes of NBC. After his first press conference Brian Williams categorized it as, “a live special television event brought to you by narcissism, thin skin, chaos and deeply personal grievances.”816
Other NBC anchors just seem to complain about Trump instead of actually reporting on what he’s doing. When Andrea Mitchell was the guest host of Meet The Press she mentioned that Trump’s plan to fix Obamacare was just a bunch of white men who wanted to cut off healthcare for women.817
When their Nightly News anchor Lester Holt interviewed President Trump for the first time, he interrupted him nine times in just two and a half minutes, barely letting him finish a sentence before he would cut him off to challenge what he was saying, or ask him something else as if he didn’t want him to finish his point.818
Every night on NBC News their disdain for President Trump is clear in how they frame their opening segment and cast their coverage of him in the most negative light possible. They too have long given up on objectivity in exchange for being another weapon in the arsenal of the Liberal Establishment.
CBS News
Shortly after the ‘fake news’ phenomenon swept the country, CBS actually changed their slogan to “Real News” in what many thought was a pathetic try-hard attempt hoping to somehow convince people they were a ‘trustworthy’ network. Many people joked that if a news station has to claim they’re “real news” then there’s a real problem. In this chapter you’ll see just a sample of some of the fake news coming from CBS and why they’re so defensive about being a ‘real’ news network.