NBC News Misreports White House Preparing for McMaster Exit
NBC News reported on March 1 in an exclusive report that the White House is making preparations to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster as early as next month.The sources for the article are described as “five people familiar with the discussions.”
The White House, however, denied that there are plans to fire McMaster and instead said President Donald Trump is pleased with his performance.
“General McMaster is not going anywhere. As the president said yesterday, in the Oval Office to a number of the people, he thinks he is doing a great job and glad he is here,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
This is not the first time that NBC News misreported on senior Trump officials.
New York Times Wins Prestigious Award in Part on Inaccurate Reporting
The New York Times was awarded the prestigious George Polk award for its reporting on the Russia investigations.Speaking under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 8, 2017, Comey had discredited the Feb. 15 front-page story, which claimed that members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”
At the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) pressed Comey on the piece from The New York Times, asking, “Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?”, to which Comey replied, “Yes.”
“All of you know this. Maybe the American people don’t,” Comey said, addressing the Senate committee. He said when it comes to reporters writing stories about classified information, “people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on.”
Major Networks Coverage of Trump 91 Percent Negative
Research by the Media Research Center shows that 91 percent of coverage of President Donald Trump by the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts in January and February were negative.According to the research, only 9 percent of statements made about Trump in the broadcasts were positive.
The study includes all 505 evening news stories that mentioned Trump or his administration.
The research also shows that 24 percent of the broadcast time was dedicated to the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The topic received over twice the amount of airtime compared to the second most covered topic during the surveyed time period, which was the debate over immigration policy.