A series of debacles has Comcast scrambling to replace NBC News and MSNBC chairman Andy Lack by year’s end, reports Fox News.
Ironically, NBC News brought back the 70-year-old Lack in 2015 (he had run the place from 1993 to 2001) to clean up the news division’s reputation after its figurehead, then-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, was revealed to be a serial liar. Williams was eventually suspended for six months and demoted to a primetime slot at MSNBC.
Unfortunately for Lack and NBC News, things have only gotten worse. Much worse. While CNN still holds the crown as America’s fake news-laughingstock, NBC is in the running, as it has devolved into a haven for proven liars, accused-sex abusers and enablers, rape-deniers, homophobes, victim-shamers, fake news-bombshells, and a glaringly obvious whitewash presented as an internal investigation.
Here are the 12 scandals currently rocking Lack and NBC News:
- Late last month, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid was caught lying about the origin of countless gay-baiting posts on an old blog of hers. After falsely claiming she had been hacked, to bolster this fabrication, both Reid and NBC News said the FBI was looking into it. After it became obvious she was lying, Reid semi-confessed to writing the homophobic posts and apologized.
We still do not know the status of the so-called FBI investigation.
Were we lied to about the FBI investigating?
Was the FBI sent on a wild goose chase based on a lie?
Thus far, Reid has faced no public consequences for her appalling behavior.
- Late last year, we learned NBC News paid off a woman who accused Hardball host Chris Matthews of sexual harassment. While the alleged payoff did not happen on Lack’s watch, the revelation did, and it has since been swept under the rug.
- NBC released a bombshell report this month about federal investigators’ wiretapping the phone of President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The report also claimed that conversations with Trump might have been picked up. After rocking the world and spooking the stock market, we learned that none of it was true. To compound its credibility problems, rather than retract its fake news, NBC chose to only “correct” it.
- Although journalist Leeann Tweeden presented photographic proof of disgraced former-Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) groping her, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski still attacked Tweeden’s credibility over the fact that she was once a Playboy model. Brzezinski faced no public consequences for her slut-shaming.
- Late last year, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News lied about Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegation against former President Bill Clinton’s being “discredited.” Rape-denier Mitchell has never corrected her false reporting.
- According to numerous reports, NBC News was and is filled with countless staffers and executives who enabled the alleged predations of Matt Lauer.
- Late last year, Morning Joe co-host Brzezinski again shamed the alleged victims of sexual misconduct, this time on behalf of her disgraced pal, Mark Halperin.
- NBC News completely mishandled the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against NBC News icon Tom Brokaw, who released a statement personally excoriating the professionalism of one of his accusers, Linda Vester.
- NBC staffers claim they were pressured to sign a letter in support of Brokaw. This blew up in the network’s face after a third accuser came forward.
- NBC News sent Ronan Farrow and his bombshell reporting about Harvey Weinstein packing. Farrow ended up at the New Yorker and won a well-deserved Pulitzer.
- Last week, NBC News reported that NBC News had released an investigation by NBC News that found no evidence of wrongdoing at NBC News.
As if NBC News was not already sinking into a credibility crater, the network not only broke the long-held news tradition of hiring outside lawyers to conduct internal investigations, the report it did release was an obvious whitewash. To begin with, Fox News reported that Ann Curry, who has said publicly that she warned NBC management about Lauer, was added to the report only as a footnote. Numerous other NBC staffers who worked with Lauer were also not contacted by investigators.
- According to Fox News, it was Lack who hired Megyn Kelly for an outrageous $23 million a year, only to watch her tank in the ratings.
Bonus scandals elsewhere at NBC:
- NBC hired serial-homophobe Alec Baldwin to headline Saturday Night Live.
- NBC Sports hired Mike Tirico, who had previously been accused of “stalking, groping, and making explicit comments to female colleagues,” to anchor the Winter Olympics.
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Lack might be to blame for a little of this and a little of that. The real problem, however, is the culture of the establishment media as a whole. The MSM is a provincial and tribalist institution that has always placed left-wing purity over credibility, decency, and integrity. A good example of this is that the only issue NBC News appears to have handled correctly was the reprimand of MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt for his “unrevealed ties” with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt.
Hewitt is one of the few right-center hosts allowed on NBC. Meanwhile, far-leftists such as Joy Reid, Mika Brzezinski, Andrea Mitchell, and the rest are allowed to keep on keeping on.
And so, even if Lack is fired, the new boss will surely look exactly like the old boss.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.