Former NBC Reporter Makes Damning Accusation Against Networks

Think the media doesn't do enough to call out Washington?

Lisa Meyers (Image via Twitter)

At least one ex-TV journalist agrees with you.

In a conversation this week with the Des Moines Register, Lisa Myers, a former senior investigative correspondent for the NBC Nightly News, laid out "the deterioration in the quality of journalism you see on TV."

The problem boils down to networks figuring people just don't want to see serious reporting, Myers said:

I think the primary mission of journalism is to hold the powerful accountable, be they in government or corporate America. There is less and less interest in network television today holding the White House or any other part of government accountable. I fear there is a calculation that the audiences they are trying to reach don't care that much about the serious news. I think most of the political coverage these days has all the depth of Twitter.

She also lamented the increasingly polarized media landscape — and said it's causing people to not trust what they see on TV news:

I also worry that journalists today appear to have chosen sides when it comes to political coverage. I think you see that in the sagging approval numbers of TV news over the last few years. We've seen trust in the media hit its lowest level ever in 2013 or 2014 surveys and I think the lack of depth and the feeling that too many journalists have chosen sides has caused viewers to question whether we are giving it to them straight and whether we are making a politically balanced presentation.

According to a recent New York Magazine article, Myers clashed with now-suspended "Nightly News" Managing Editor Brian Williams after he reportedly refused to run some stories detrimental to the Obama administration:

Others complained about Williams’s unwillingness to go after hard-hitting stories. Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones. He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obama­care. Frustrated, Myers posted the articleon NBC’s website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. “He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories. ­Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).

Myers left NBC early last year so she could spend time "working on my golf game."

(H/T: Hot Air)

This story has been updated.

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