Managing editor of politics for NBC News and MSNBC Dafna Linzer and media reporter Yashar Ali apparently engaged in a bizarre back and forth phone conversation regarding Ali’s scoop from yesterday that NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo would co-host the first Democratic Party debate on two specific nights in June: the 26th and the 27th.
Back in February, the three NBCU networks had announced that they’d co-host the debates, yet they had yet to announce the location and specific dates.
Ali got the dates and the location (Miami) before the network was ready to announce, and Linzer apparently wanted Ali to delay publishing his scoop. It comes across as odd that she was asking this of him, not at the behest of her employer, but instead on behalf of the Democratic National Committee wanted time to notify their state leaders.
“Why not?” Linzer continued to ask Ali when he said he was going to publish his scoop without being forced to wait for the DNC. “It’s not a big deal, let them make a few phone calls,” she apparently stated.
“I realized that [Linzer], the head of all political coverage for NBC News and MSNBC, wasn’t calling to advocate for her network, she was calling to advocate the DNC’s position,” Ali said during an extremely lengthy Twitter thread. “I was so surprised me that she was talking this way with a total stranger. The head of the political division was trying to bully me at the behest of the DNC over a dumb scoop.”
Tweets 20 and 21 are particularly interesting to me:
21. I said “no, I want to go talk to my editor.” Then she sent me over the edge and said “What’s your editors name, I want to talk to them.” She was trying to intimidate me..on behalf of the DNC. I ended the call.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
Linzer joined MSNBC in 2013 as managing editor of MSNBC digital. Prior to that, she was a senior investigative reporter at ProPublica, a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press for 10 years based in Jerusalem and the United Nations. After that, she was a national security reporter for The Washington Post covering intelligence.
Here’s the 25-tweet thread, in case you’re interested:
2. Dafna, who oversees the political coverage for NBC and MSNBC, was calling to bully me into delaying the publication of an innocuous scoop and at no point did she advocate for her network, it was only about the DNC.
Here’s how this all started…
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
3. Yesterday morning I received a tip from a trusted source. The source told me the DNC would be announcing the dates of the first 2020 primary debates later that day. The source gave me the dates they would be announcing: June 26 and 27.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
5. This wasn’t a huge scoop but it was a decent one so I quickly called the DNC to fact-check the tip as I was running out of time: the dates would be announced on MSNBC in the 4:00 PM hour. It’s important to note that almost of all of my communication with the DNC was off record
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
7. For another hour so they could go through their important notification calls to the state parties. I told them I couldn’t wait as the news would leak and leave me without a story. That’s all I can say about the call. Two minutes later I received a call from Dafna.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
9. So when I saw Dafna calling I assumed she would ask me to consider delaying my post so that MSNBC could announce it first. Given that this was an innocuous scoop and not some investigative story I wouldn’t have lost sleep if I had delayed. But that’s not why she was calling.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
11. She asked if I could hold the story and I said I couldn’t. She was agitated, “why not?” I said I’m not going to lose a scoop. Then she got angrier and said “Why not? It’s not a big deal, let them make a few phone calls.”
My jaw dropped.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
13. I thought to myself “this is how people think it works.” It’s not. But Dafna was doing it. She kept pressing me. Now I acknowledged, for stuff that isn’t about serious investigative reporting, there is no problem holding something. But I knew once others got the call
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
15. I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Again, it was fine for me to print the story an hour later, beat her own network by three hours, she just wanted me to let the DNC inform state party leaders. Why the hell did she care?
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
17. I was so surprised me that she was talking this way with a total stranger. The head of the political division was trying to bully me at the behest of the DNC over a dumb scoop (even though they may not have asked her to)
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
19. I’m not one of those gotcha reporters, I think it’s bad for sourcing relationships to make people like they constantly feel like they have to say “off record.” But Dafna isn’t a source and she was calling to intimidate me, so she doesn’t get the benefit.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
21. I said “no, I want to go talk to my editor.” Then she sent me over the edge and said “What’s your editors name, I want to talk to them.” She was trying to intimidate me..on behalf of the DNC. I ended the call.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
23. I’m not naive to the fact that this incident is going to be twisted by some with an agenda to discredit the media and say they collude with political parties. But I think its more important to expose bad behavior then keep it under wraps. What Dafna did was unethical
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019
25. What I can’t figure out is (and no one else I spoke to could understand), why open yourself up to this for a stupid story? How was this worth it?
END
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019