While it does not have a monopoly on bad reporting, NBC News has had its share of mistakes, leading to corrections, apologies, and some dismissals.
As the internal investigation into Brian Williams‘s reporting begins at NBC News, here are 5 incidents of — at best wrong, and at worst malicious — reporting, including one that goes back more than 20 years; an incident that is still taught in journalism schools.
1) On January 8, NBC’s Pete Williams reported that the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack had been killed. After several online corrections, Brian Williams was forced to explain on “Nightly News” the following night that the information from their sources “turned out not to be correct.”
2) In May 2012, NBC News correspondent Liliana Luciano was the third employee to be dismissed for the selective editing of a report about the Trayvon Martin killing. In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, a part of George Zimmerman‘s 911 call in which an entire phrase was taken from a later part of the conversation, was used. Zimmerman later sued NBC.
3) On January 27, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewksi reported Bowe Berghdal “will be charged with desertion” adding that charges “could be referred within a week.” The Pentagon vehemently denied the report. That night on “Nightly News” Williams softened the language saying that Bergdahl “will likely soon be charged with desertion,” adding “no final decisions have been made.”
4) The issue of Dr. Nancy Snyderman is less a mistake, but rather bad judgement that cast a poor light on the news division. In October, Snyderman was forced to apologize for breaking a quarantine following the Ebola diagnosis of one of her crew members while reporting in Africa.
5) Perhaps the most egregious mistake in the history of the news division happened in November 1992, when “Dateline NBC” staged an explosive test crash of a GM pickup truck. General Motors sued NBC News, and the two sides settled. But it cost the president of NBC News at the time, Michael Gartner, his job.