A North Carolina news outlet covered up a poll showing the worst approval rating numbers for President Joe Biden in the state since the Democrat took office earlier this year.
UPDATE: The story has since been republished with the same web address hours after Breitbart News reached out to the North Carolina news outlet with follow-up requests for further comment, which Breitbart News has yet to receive a response to.
A story on the poll, which was published by reporter named Maggie Brown at WRAL — a local NBC affiliate in North Carolina — was titled “HPU poll: Joe Biden’s approval rating among North Carolinians below 40%.” The article showed the president’s approval rating with North Carolinians at only 38 percent, the lowest approval rating for Biden in North Carolina since he’s been elected. The poll also showed a higher percentage (48 percent) of disapproval, with only 14 percent who “didn’t know” or “refused” to answer.
While WRAL has since removed the clearly newsworthy negative article on Biden from its website, the actual poll — conducted by High Point University — is still available from the university’s website.
After a few hours of the article being up on WRAL’s website, the organization removed the story withholding the news from its readers, instead showing those who went to the link where the survey was originally published an error code of 404, and stating, “Sorry – wrong address!”
Website of North Carolina NBC affiliate WRAL. (Screenshot).
Breitbart News inquired with WRAL about why the publication was covering up the poll showing bad approval numbers for Biden in North Carolina and why the article was taken down.
An editor named Matthew Burns — who appears to be a senior producer and political editor for the news organization and has been there for over 15 years — told Breitbart News that he told the reporter his news organization is not interested in polls about the president of the United States since there is not currently election going on. When he was pressed on why his news organization published the story, and why he eventually took it down, Burns said that WRAL “is not interested in polls.”
Burns also claimed that “there is no election going on now” and “there’s no reason to be writing polls, polling stories.”
Burns has not replied to follow-up requests for further comment.
Follow Jacob Bliss on Twitter @jacobmbliss.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.