ALL WE KNOW IS THAT HE’S CALLED THE STIG: NBC disinformation reporter is actually a partisan opinion writer.
[Ben Collins’] work doesn’t focus on breaking news stories nearly so much as it does on spreading naive disinformation. Collins’s intent appears to rest with scoring cheap Twitter hits and accruing the associated endorphin release gained when his sympathetic colleagues then praise his hot takes. Take what happened on Thursday when the SpaceX Starship rocket lifted off and shortly thereafter exploded over the Gulf of Mexico. This was a result predicted by SpaceX founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk and by engineers on the massive project. Still, Collins couldn’t help but weigh in on his Twitter feed, saying, “The kid gloves we in the press give this man is unbelievable.”
To be sure, Musk isn’t perfect. His commitment to free speech is flexible, for example. But again, Collins’s rhetoric isn’t exactly reporter-style rhetoric. It’s clearly a statement of loaded opinion. Of course, this isn’t the first time Collins has prioritized scoring cheap points against Elon Musk. Indeed, he was reportedly suspended by NBC News for a brief period for his rabid hyperventilating surrounding Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Just a day prior to Collins’s foray into rocket science, he reacted after Twitter suspended a journalist from Wired for soliciting hacked information pertaining to conservative commentator Matt Walsh. That solicitation was a violation of Twitter’s terms of service. But Collins instead offered his familiar hyper-partisan glibness, tweeting, “Fun fact: This is the very same rule that was used to block distribution of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden, the greatest First Amendment violation in American history.”
Related: Are the Walter Cronkite journalism awards for real? “Ben Collins, the NBC News reporter who cried on television and demanded reporters do better in the wake of the Club Q nightclub shooting, received special recognition from the Cronkite Awards.”
Other 2023 awardees stand out, like ABC News’s Terry Moran. Moran earned his national program award for a Hulu special about voter fraud, and was at least partially recognized for his incredibly dogged reporting “from a Tudor Dixon rally in Michigan”. Remarkable stuff! Members of VICE News were awarded for “airing death threat voicemails to poll workers — and calling the perpetrators back.” One judge called the hard work of pressing play on another person’s iPhone “compelling and courageous.” Jordan Klepper, a comedian with The Daily Show who, naturally, only pillories the political right, received a “special recognition for using humor to inform and engage audiences.”
Walter Cronkite was not the perfectly objective journalist that some older generations like to romanticize. But he certainly was a lot better than the clowns who are receiving honors under the award named after him!
Or was he? Walter Cronkite: Liberalism in the Guise of Objectivity.
(Classical reference in headline.)