As part of NBC Nightly News’s five segments on Tuesday obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on all Muslims entering the United States, the program turned to former anchor Tom Brokaw to end the show with a commentary comparing Trump to Nazism, McCarthyism, and opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the three teases proceeding Brokaw’s editorial, current anchor Lester Holt promised that Brokaw would discuss “the politics of fear” and the “harsh,” “ugly lessons about fear and marginalizing groups of people.”
Tom Brokaw
By Curtis Houck | December 8, 2015 | 10:16 PM EST
Acting as though the latest news the war against ISIS, new developments in the Hillary Clinton scandal or any other story barely existed, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a whopping 24 minutes and three seconds of their Tuesday evening newscasts to obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. Not surprisingly, NBC Nightly News led the way by spending nearly half its newscast on Trump with five segments adding up to 12 minutes and 34 seconds.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 23, 2015 | 10:06 AM EDT
Say, Tom, maybe you could lead a movement to retroactively impeach George W. Bush . . . On today's Morning Joe, Tom Brokaw, downplayed the significance of Benghazi, suggesting instead that what we really needed was "a big congressional investigation about the decision to go to war in the first place in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist."
Brokaw also underlined that more lives were lost in terrorist attacks on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon, the USS Cole and Khobar Towers than in Benghazi. Brokaw made a point to mention that the attack on the Marine barracks happened during Ronald Reagan's presidency, but failed to disclose that the USS Cole and Khobar Towers attacks happened during the presidency of Hillary Clinton's husband. Simple slip by Brokaw, no doubt.
By Curtis Houck | September 24, 2015 | 10:39 PM EDT
In the litany of network news coverage Thursday night on Pope Francis’s address to Congress, ABC’s World News Tonight largely stayed away from the Pope’s comments about abortion and traditional marriage by relegating them to vague references while CBS and NBC did their due diligence and mentioned them amidst their continued obsession over the Pope’s liberal positions.
By Jeffrey Meyer | September 6, 2015 | 11:59 AM EDT
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, NBC’s Tom Brokaw strongly criticized Hillary Clinton’s performance during her interview with colleague Andrea Mitchell, specifically her answers to why she decided to use a private e-mail server while Secretary of State. Brokaw admitted that when Clinton said “I didn't think about the effect of e-mail, I was stunned. I mean, we were deep into the digital age at that point. She's Secretary of State.”
By Rich Noyes | July 17, 2015 | 5:03 PM EDT
Nearly 27 years before Donald Trump actually announced he was running for President, then-NBC News correspondent Chris Wallace pressed a younger, thinner Trump about his political ambitions during an interview at the 1988 Republican National Convention. Not surprisingly, Trump at that time said if he did run for President, “I’d have a very good chance....When I do something, I like to win.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 12, 2015 | 10:05 AM EDT
Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw appeared on FNC’s Hannity Monday night to promote his memoir but when the subject of Brian Williams’ suspension was brought up, he insisted that “almost all” of the stories about the two of them were “wrong.”
By Curtis Houck | April 7, 2015 | 6:24 PM EDT
According to a new Vanity Fair exposé on the troubled NBC News, the Brian Williams scandal appears far from over as additional examples of fabrications by the suspended NBC Nightly News anchor have been uncovered and it’s unknown whether Williams will return to the network. Inside Bryan Burrough’s 8,400-word plus piece, he reported that the investigation into Williams’s numerous claims “is ongoing” and “people who have spoken to Esposito say his group has compiled a number of other incidents that, taken as a whole, paint a portrait of Williams as a man who has consistently burnished his stories.”
By Tom Johnson | February 11, 2015 | 6:07 PM EST
Ken Auletta reports that Williams had agreed to a suspension but “wanted a declaration by NBC that he would return as an evening-news anchor.” NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke, “torn between wanting to take a hard line and feeling compassion for Williams,” sought Brokaw’s counsel regarding the matter. After Brokaw said he was “concerned about the effects of Williams’s actions on the reputation of the rank and file in the news division,” Burke decided to make the suspension “non-negotiable.”
By Geoffrey Dickens | February 6, 2015 | 4:36 PM EST
With Brian Williams’ reputation now tarnished by his Iraq war tall-tales it’s going to be awfully awkward for NBC News to allow him to cover any stories involving public figures caught in lies. At the very least his days of “precinct captain for” NBC’s “Truth Squad” are probably over. Williams served in that capacity during NBC News’s live coverage of the 2004 presidential and vice presidential debates.
By Tom Blumer | February 6, 2015 | 1:24 AM EST
If Brian Williams or any of the executives at NBC thought that the controversy over his "fake Iraq story" might start to die down, developments this evening have proven that they were sadly mistaken.
The quoted words in the previous sentence are from a headline at an Associated Press story by David Bauder, the wire service's TV writer. The fact that the nation's self-described "essential global news network" felt comfortable using those words to describe the 12 year-old saga of Williams's fabricated adventure in Iraq is actually among the least of his and his network's troubles tonight. Two major stories at the New York Post's Page Six appear to have made their continuing with the status quo very difficult to imagine.
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 25, 2015 | 1:13 PM EST
Following Congressman Steve King’s (R-IA) Iowa Freedom Summit, which hosted several potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates, the panel on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning happily scolded the GOPers for attending the prominent conservative gathering. During the discussion, Helene Cooper, correspondent for The New York Times, argued that Republicans “in many, many ways are their own worst enemies. They go so far to the right in order to out-conservative everybody else.”