NBC News contradicted itself in its own news coverage when it criticized a planned political rally organized by President Donald Trump’s campaign but also praised a rally in Brooklyn.
The news outlet headlined the rally, “Rally for Black trans lives draws enormous crowd in Brooklyn.”
When it came to covering Trump’s planned rally in Tulsa, NBC News’s headline said, “’Extraordinarily dangerous’: Trump rally draws grave concerns from top health officials.”
The contradicting headlines exposed the news outlet’s hypocrisy and its penchant to play favorites according to ideology. NBC News favorably covered the Brooklyn rally, whose goal was to offer public support for black trans lives, or the lives of black transgender individuals.
The news outlet reported that the attendance for the rally was “likely in the thousands.” NBC News video and photographs show that few protesters engaged in social distancing of six feet apart from another person, as recommended by public health officials. The article claimed that the country continues to rally “behind dismantling racist systems that put Black lives at risk,” furthering the claim that institutional or systemic racism exists in U.S. institutions.
NBC News did not mention any public health official’s concerns with disregarding social distancing during protests, neither did it acknowledge public health guidelines such as social distancing.
However, NBC News did not offer similar positive coverage to Trump’s upcoming rally in Oklahoma. From the beginning of the article, the news outlet cited some health experts and their opposition to Trump holding a political rally. It quoted a local Tulsa county public health official, who wished that the Trump campaign would delay the rally for several more weeks to prevent a potential coronavirus outbreak in an area with “relatively few” coronavirus cases. The news outlet also referred to “other health experts” which had cited “the danger of infections spreading among the crowd and sparking outbreaks when people return to their homes.”
Comments
Comments are turned off for this article.