After Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a funding bill for the National Institutes of Health, NBC Nightly News has run two feature stories about children and other patients who could not enroll in a cancer clinical trial at NIH because of the “shutdown.”
In neither story was the Republican funding bill or Democratic rejection of funding mentioned.
The most recent feature story was last night.
Those of you who read this blog, or pay even cursory attention to the news, know that House Republicans passed the NIH funding bill, over the objections of 170 Democrats who voted against it.
Harry Reid then refused to agree to a consent motion in the Senate to approve the funding. Dana Bash at CNN even questioned Reid about it at a press conference, wondering why he won’t just agree to the House funding bill since it might help a child.
All of this took place against an Obama veto threat.
Anyone who pays even a little attention knows that it is Democrats, and Democrats alone who have blocked funding for NIH child clinical trials.
Yet in the entire segment on NBC tonight, not a word was mentioned about why there is no funding. All that is mentioned is a generic and presumably bi-partisan failure to reach an agreement. Here’s the full video (full transcript here):
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This is not the first time NBC Nightly News has ignored that Democrats are opposed to the funding bill, and unable to put political differences aside even for children with cancer and rare diseases.
On Thursday, October 3, NBC Nightly news ran another segment that ignored Democrats’ opposition:
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This is your mainstream media bias at work. It’s not just what they do report, it’s what they ignore.
And what they ignore is that Democrats killed funding for the children featured in the NBC Nightly News segments. Even a single sentence in these reports would have put it in context.
Please note, we are not talking about MSNBC.
We are talking about NBC Nightly News, the flagship news program at NBC.
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