NBC suddenly uncomfortable with flimsy sourcing
Change of heart.
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NBC News has discovered a newfound appreciation for on-the-record sources and just in time for the Biden administration.
The Peacock Network last week retracted a report that leveled the anti-Semitic “dual loyalty” trope against deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger. The journalist responsible for the since-retracted story, NBC’s Ken Dilanian, however, stands by every word of it.
"The story is accurate and was published by NBC News after our normal editing and vetting process, which includes review by our legal and standards departments," he told the Washington Free Beacon.
If Dilanian is confused by NBC’s decision to pull his story, he has a right to be. After all, the network clearly had no problem with his thinly and/or anonymously sourced reporting during the Trump era. It clearly had no problem when his reporting proved to be flat-out false, such as when he claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story was really just Russian disinformation.
Why the sudden change of heart from his superiors?
The since-retracted NBC article, which was “jointly reported” with Mother Jones’s David Corn, which itself seems strange, investigated sizeable monetary contributions that Neuberger, who is Jewish, made to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee via her family foundation.
The NBC article went a bit beyond just following the money, however, as it also quoted anonymous officials who say they’re worried that the contributions could risk "the possible appearance of bias in favor of Israel by a top American official.”
“A cross section of current and former intelligence officials and foreign policy experts — none of whom were willing to be named — said the donations created an appearance problem,” the report read. “They noted that Israel, whose companies build and sell spying gear to regimes abroad and whose intelligence agencies hack foreign governments around the world, has a big stake in American cyber policy.”
It added, “Two of the sources interviewed who know Neuberger say she is a person of high integrity. Nonetheless, installing a top cyber official in the White House who has strong ties to an organization that represents the interests of the Israeli government could cause some people to question the impartiality of the policy process, they said.”
To reiterate: Not a single critic of Neuberger’s donations went on the record for the NBC report. Not the person who is quoted as saying the money “indicates a pretty strong preference”; not the person who said simply that Neuberger’s contributions are “not good.”
The National Security Council itself took issue with NBC’s reporting, saying through a spokesperson, “We are appalled by recent spurious accusations against our staff. We welcome oversight and scrutiny, but there is no justification for false and ad hominem attacks based on ethnic, racial, or religious identity.”
AIPAC, for its part, demanded that NBC retract the story, claiming, "charges of dual loyalty are anti-Semitic and insult millions of Americans—Jewish & non-Jewish—who stand by our ally Israel."
It was not long before NBC bowed to the well-deserved criticism. It agreed in a statement that its reporter failed to perform the most basic functions of his duties as a journalist. For starters, NBC conceded, his first mistake was neglecting to get a single on-the-record quote from critics of Neuberger’s contributions.
Well, that is a strange thing for NBC to say, considering Dilanian’s reporting during the Trump years, especially on the Russian collusion story, was positively chockablock with anonymous sourcing and reckless speculation.
NBC conceded also that Dilanian failed when he declined to give Neuberger a reasonable amount of time to respond to his requests for comment.
In the place where the story once appeared on NBC’s website exists now only a lengthy editor’s note that says, "After a number of readers raised issues with this article, NBC News conducted a review and has determined that it fell short of our reporting standards. In order to warrant publication, it needed on-the-record quotes from critics, rather than anonymous ones."
Good for NBC, but one can’t help but wonder: Where was this dedication to journalistic rigor during any of Dilanian’s partisan and irresponsible coverage of the Russian collusion story? Where was this concern when Dilanian co-authored an article based entirely on a single Facebook post written by a woman who said she could contemporaneously corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh? For the record, the woman who wrote the Facebook post, which was deleted almost immediately, said later in an interview, “I have no idea” if Kavanaugh assaulted Ford. “I can't say that it did or didn't” happen, she added.
Dilanian’s Russian collusion and Kavanaugh stories, by the way, are still available to read on NBC’s website.
Anyway, it’s probably just a coincidence that NBC’s apparent turn away from news reports based entirely on nameless and shoddy sourcing comes exactly as Democrats take the White House and Congress.