During the recent war in Gaza, NBC News used two images of which definitely one and possibly both qualify as deceptive propaganda against Israel's war effort.
The first example is the infamous image of a child who was killed by shrapnel from a rocket fired out of Gaza by the terrorist group Hamas, but which some news outlets, including CNN, attributed to an Israeli airstrike early on.
Richard Engel
By Brad Wilmouth | November 24, 2012 | 10:13 AM EST
By Brad Wilmouth | November 22, 2012 | 7:28 PM EST
On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, as Richard Engel informed viewers that the Israeli military drops leaflets in Gaza to warn civilians when airstrikes are about to happen so they can evacuate to safety, the NBC correspondent still managed to put a negative spin on the warnings that are meant to diminish civilian casualties. After recounting that frightened civilians frantically left from their homes, Engel observed:
By Kyle Drennen | November 20, 2012 | 5:00 PM EST
Leading off Monday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams wrung his hands over Israel suffering fewer casualties than Gaza in the ongoing Mideast conflict: "It is a lop-sided fight right now, the estimated death toll is more than a hundred in Gaza, with three Israelis reported dead. The fusillade of rockets from Gaza into Israel is being answered by air strikes, many from drones, many aimed at individuals inside buildings, inside densely packed neighborhoods."
Williams's desire for a fairer fight was reminiscent of former NBC commentator John Chancellor's reaction to the Persian Gulf War in 1992, telling then-Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw: "Greenpeace, the public interest organization, believes that the Iraqi death toll, civilian and military, before and after the war, may be as high as 198,000. Allied military dead are counted in the low hundreds. The disparity is huge and somewhat embarrassing."
By Brad Wilmouth | November 17, 2012 | 7:47 PM EST
On Friday's World News on ABC, correspondent Alex Marquardt relayed without question a claim by "one of the militant groups behind" the rocket attacks on Israel that they "wouldn't fire rockets if Israel wasn't killing us," even though almost 700 rockets had already been fired out of Gaza into the Jewish state between January 1 and November 5, well before Israel's recent sustained military campaign began.
By Kyle Drennen | November 2, 2012 | 5:18 PM EDT
Reporting for Thursday's NBC Rock Center, chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel ranted over the lack of infrastructure spending to protect against Hurricane Sandy and tried to blame it on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: "...the thing we've spent the most money on, a trillion-plus dollars, the most American lives on, and that has been bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, with very questionable results." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Rather than be in Lybia covering the growing scandal over the Obama administration's botched response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Engel sat in the NBC News New York studio and proclaimed: "People I've spoken to, experts in this field, say we would be a lot safer, not just richer, if we had spent a lot of that money on improving infrastructure."
By P.J. Gladnick | September 13, 2012 | 1:25 PM EDT
Quick! Get NBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel a chair.
Engel claims that he was so shocked at Barack Obama's statement that he now considers Egypt neither an ally nor an enemy that he "almost had to sit down." So if this is true, why did Obama support the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who was very much our ally, Engel wonders. Here (and below the fold) in this video is Engel in desperate need of a chair over the shock administered by Obama's uncertainity about whether Egypt is friend or foe.
By Kyle Drennen | August 7, 2012 | 12:13 PM EDT
Introducing a report on the ongoing civil war in Syria on Monday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams made sure to promote PR from the White House: "...the State Department and the Pentagon are now working together on plans for Syria after Assad, hoping to avoid the chaos they believe broke out because of the lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
However, the report that followed by chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel seemed to undermine the notion of a well-planned U.S. strategy in Syria against the Assad regime: "A rebel commander with a hundred fighters in [the city of] Aleppo told us today if the rebels don't receive a massive influx of weapons within the next 72 hours, they'll have to give up the fight."
By Brad Wilmouth | May 27, 2012 | 10:43 AM EDT
On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, NBC correspondent Richard Engel conveyed that the reform advocates who led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt are distraught at the kinds of candidates that Egyptian voters are choosing to replace Mubarak, with both major presidential candidates likely to curtail freedom if elected. Engel recounted: (Video at bottom)
Live Report From North Korea Cut Short After NBC Reporter Describes Failed Missile as 'Enormous Embarrassment'
By Jack Coleman | April 13, 2012 | 5:58 PM EDT
North Koreans appear even more prickly about criticism of their dear leadership as American liberals are of theirs.
On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow was interviewing NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel live from Pyongyang shortly after a long-range missile launched by the communist regime broke apart and crashed into the sea. (video after page break)
By Brad Wilmouth | December 22, 2011 | 9:58 AM EST
On Thursday, as NBC's Today show covered the eruption of more than a dozen bombings in Iraq just days after the pullout of U.S. troops, correspondent Richard Engel argued against the view that the Obama administration should have been more effective in negotiating an agreement with the Iraqi government for an extended U.S. troop presence which might have helped ward off such attacks. (Video below)
As Engel appeared on set, co-anchor Ann Curry posed:
By Kyle Drennen | December 16, 2011 | 11:34 AM EST
At the top of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams sadly declared: "At a ceremony in Baghdad today, the Americans lowered the flag and it was a quiet ending to a war that went bad not long after its spectacular start." While Williams stressed the "high cost" of the war, citing figures of dead and wounded, the report that followed ignored accomplishments in the conflict.
Chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel followed Williams sorrowful tone: "For a big war, it was a remarkably small closing ceremony. A few hundred troops, a five-piece band on a base by the airport on the edge of Baghdad." He later rhetorically wondered: "Did America prevail? Iraq's future remains uncertain....What was conspicuously absent today, Brian, there were no parades among Iraqis, no victory celebrations, no thank yous."
By Kyle Drennen | December 15, 2011 | 12:53 PM EST
Opening NBC's Nightly News on Wednesday, anchor Brian Williams touted the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as an Obama administration accomplishment while slamming the war effort itself: "The President promised they'd be out by New Year's Eve and here they come....The war started with the event somebody called 'shock and awe' and it became a tragic and prolonged slog."
In the report that followed, White House correspondent Kristen Welker announced: "Mr. Obama has opposed the war since his days as a state senator. And today he said it's harder to end a war than to begin one....The President, facing a tough re-election battle, did not declare victory in Iraq, but has called the withdrawal a campaign promise kept."