In a story on illegal child labor, no detail is more important than age. That’s an axiom that NBC News and Noticias Telemundo illuminated on Wednesday with a retraction of an April 12 report that was “withdrawn in light of new information that the migrant is not a minor.” They did the right thing in withdrawing the joint report.
NBC News has demanded that Donald Trump’s campaign remove a video that includes audio deceptively edited to seem like it comes from an NBC correspondent after the third presidential debate, two people familiar with the exchange say. The video in question, shared by a top Trump adviser, opens with authentic footage of NBC News senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake previewing the debate for the network. It soon cuts to video of each candidate as a voiceover — in Haake’s voice — makes disparaging comments about the candidates.
At a time when competition between streaming and broadcasting often drives a wedge between networks and their affiliates, the year-old NBC News Daily appears to be an unusual example of cooperation. The one-hour newscast, designed to replace the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives when it moved from NBC to Peacock in 2022, appears on both the NBC News Now streaming channel and all of NBC’s affiliates and ratings are rising.
With the third GOP presidential primary debate taking place on Wednesday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, NBC News has been camped at the Telemundo Center in Miami, broadcasting two of its signature shows out of the facility.
Exclusives
How Salem Media Group — a powerful network of pro-Trump talk-radio programming and producer of the discredited ’2000 Mules’ documentary — ended up joining forces with NBC News.
David Corvo, considered the driving force behind Dateline, NBC’s top-rated and longest-running primetime series, is stepping down as senior executive producer at the end of the year. He will remain with NBC News as an adviser on various projects, reporting to Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial at NBC News.
Lester Holt may be turning up more frequently in David Muir‘s rear-view mirror. During Muir’s tenure at World News Tonight, the ABC broadcast has done something most TV programs cannot do in the streaming era: Add new linear viewers. Yet in recent weeks one of the evening-news program’s competitors has nibbled at its lead in a crucial category of viewer.
The NBC Nightly News anchor and Meet the Press host will be joined as referees of Republican party candidates in Miami by Hugh Hewitt of the Salem Radio Network.
Former President Trump pledged to investigate Comcast, the parent company of NBC and MSNBC, if he is elected in 2024, saying it “will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday: “They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason.”
The interview will take place on Thursday in Bedminster, N.J., and it will be Trump’s first broadcast network sitdown since leaving office. The network has stressed that the interview is not a town hall and there is no audience, and the same invitation has been extended to President Joe Biden. The sitdown also will be accompanied by a fact check on NBCNews.com.
COMMENTARY
Women In Journalism Pass Another Milestone
Andrea Mitchell: “On Sept. 17, another milestone will be passed for women journalists. Kristen Welker is set to become the 13th moderator of Meet the Press, the longest-running show on American television. For the first time, every Sunday public affairs program will be moderated or co-moderated by a woman as Welker joins Dana Bash, Shannon Bream, Margaret Brennan, Jen Psaki and Martha Raddatz at the helms for their respective networks. Not that long ago, ‘woman journalist’ was almost an oxymoron, especially in broadcast news.”
NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd has ended his run. “After nine years and more than 430 broadcasts, today is my final Sunday in the moderator chair,” he said at the top of the hour. “To say that this has been the honor and privilege of my lifetime is an understatement.”
The incoming moderator of Meet the Press, NBC News’ Kristen Welker will receive the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award during a gala in her honor on Nov. 28 in Washington D.C.
The network is also moving the program back to New York’s Studio 1A, and adding Joe Fryer and Angie Lassman to the team.
NBC’s Today has introduced new motion graphics that embrace the show’s sunrise and build upon recent changes at Nightly News. Debuting with the Monday, July 31, edition of Today, the design pays homage to the program’s iconic sunrise logo, with its arcs and curves integrated throughout the broadcast design package.
NBC News stalwart Tom Brokaw is doing some of his deepest confessional talking this Sunday via CBS News. Brokaw talks to longtime friend Jane Pauley, who anchors CBS News Sunday Morning, and tells her about his battle with incurable blood cancer, which he has been fighting for a decade. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma 10 years ago.
NBC News on Tuesday that Peter Klein is joining the news organization as an executive editor of investigations. In this role, Klein will focus on the core investigative team and its mandate to break major news on the biggest stories in the news cycle and guide ambitious, high-impact enterprise reporting. He will work closely with national security senior executive editor David Rohde on joint investigations, exclusives and scoops.
Lester Holt has a new way of delivering headlines to the NBC Nightly News crowd. NBC News is updating the look of its venerable evening newscast, which has been on the air since 1970 and hasn’t undergone a significant overhaul of its graphics since Brian Williams sat in the anchor chair. The new presentation will move away from traditional colors associated with evening news programs in favor of purple and a warm blue, says Marc Greenstein, senior vice president of design and product for NBC News and MSNBC. Also on tap: a new “N” that can be used in innovative fashion on the many new screens on which Nightly plays in the era of digital video.
Todd, 51, told viewers Sunday that “I’ve watched too many friends and family let work consume them before it was too late” and that he’d promised his family he wouldn’t do that. Welker, a former chief White House correspondent, has been at NBC News in Washington since 2011 and has been Todd’s chief fill-in for the past three years.
The award recognizes a program’s “iconic impact on both the media landscape and the public imagination.”
