NBC News sneers at Tucker Carlson, Twitter

An NBC News program took shots at Tucker Carlson and at Twitter for allowing Carlson to host his show there.

NBC News perspective

NBC News Correspondent Tom Costello raised the complaint while acting as guest host on Hallie Jackson NOW, according to NewsBusters. In the segment in question, Costello invited former CNN Correspondent Brian Stelter to discuss recent events.

NewsBuster has the full transcript of the segment:

Costello began by accusing Twitter of allowing “misinformation, disinformation, all-out lies, anti-semitism, racism before Elon Musk took over.” The justice of that remark is far from clear, given the history of censorship that the Twitter Files revealed. But Costello went on to call Twitter “crazy” and suggest that Twitter was now a “free-for-all.”

Stelter then said it was a free-for-all, and “it’s what Elon Musk wants to provide.” In fact Elon Musk himself has said he wants a fifty-fifty distribution of right- and left-wing opinion on Twitter.

Then Stelter suggested that “some” users, presumably on the left, were already decamping from Twitter. CNAV has not noticed that. Stelter went on to comment on Tucker Carlson’s lawyers “challenging Fox” to move the “negotiation” of his exit. In fact, Carlson’s lawyers did send a letter to Fox, saying Fox is already in breach of contract. But what no one at NBC News mentioned, was that Elon Musk said specifically that Tucker Carlson has no special privileges or exclusives. The things he will be technically able to do, any user can do, eligibility for monetization, etc., permitting.

An unbiased commentator? Not so much

The two commentators closed by agreeing that Twitter was “hemorrhaging advertisers” before Tucker’s announcement. They suggest that the presence of more right-wing sentiment scares advertisers away. But again, the truth of that proposition is unclear. Advertisers might also have been decamping from Twitter because users were abandoning it – or “Trust and Safety” were pushing them off.

Brian Stelter was not the best choice NBC News could have made for an unbiased opinion on the matter. Last year he actually compared Twitter to a venue “where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody.” In short, Stelter regards Twitter as anarchic.

In fact Brian Stelter has a nasty reputation as “the hall monitor of the media.”