Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall called out the mostly liberal media members expressing outraged with NBC News’ Dasha Burns and her candor about what she saw from her interview with John Fetterman.
Burns interviewed the Pennsylvania Senate candidate for NBC Nightly News and agreed to the Fetterman campaign’s request to let him have a computer on hand to assist him. Fetterman is recovering from a stroke he experienced months ago. Since he’s coping with auditory processing issues, the computer was there to transcribe Burns’ questions for him so he could read them as they were being asked.
Burns explained that NBC was happy to provide closed-captioning accommodations but reported that “in small talk — before the interview, without captioning — it wasn’t clear [Fetterman] was understanding our conversation.”
This detail sparked an uproar among some progressively minded political observers as some accused Burns of being ableist to a stroke survivor. In contrast, others defended her for raising legitimate concerns about whether or not a senate candidate has been cognitively impaired.
Hall broke this down with NewsNations’ Leland Vittert and defended Burns, saying she “did a great job” of handling Fetterman’s first in-person interview since the stroke. Since her package addressed the core question of Fetterman’s mental acuity, Hall assessed that “Burns did a terrific job with her report and was very open and transparent” despite the criticism.
“It’s not the entire media that pounced,” Hall said. “It’s just the part of the media — which represents a lot of them — that are so wedded to their tribalism that they get their allegiance in way of the facts. What she said in a report about Fetterman was entirely dispassionate and fact-based, but that wasn’t enough for these people who had to blame her because it may hurt him in the election.”
The segment then focused on Fetterman’s level of transparency with his health, even as he continues his pursuit of the senate seat. While Hall acknowledged the media’s “empathy” for Fetterman’s situation, “I do think the media’s empathy is going over the border a little bit because his refusal to give medical records only hangs a lantern on it…It only brings more attention to the fact that, like ‘ok, so then, what are you hiding?””
Watch above via NewsNation.
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