NBC takes heat over Alex Jones TV interview
Megyn Kelly to host firebrand radio personality
Megyn Kelly and NBC are facing criticism for an upcoming TV interview with the controversial radio host Alex Jones.
Opposition surfaced soon after promotional videos of the interview with the InfoWars founder, scheduled for the June 18 episode of Sunday Night With Megyn Kel
ly, were shown during the June 11 episode and appeared online.
A #ShameonNBC hashtag began trending on Twitter with an outcry about giving a platform to Jones, who has supported conspiracy theories about the government blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and the 9/11 terror attacks. “9/11 was an inside job,” he says in the promo video.
But what has upset people most, at least on Twitter, is Jones’ allegation that the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were shot was faked.
“It’s a miracle no #sandyhook parent has ended their life yet. The loss of a loved one and the constant harrassment is too much. @megynkelly,” tweeted Nelba Márquez-Greene (@Nelba_MG), whose daughter Ana was killed in the shooting. Her son survived.
Some on Twitter also called for a boycott of the program; one user included NBC’s phone number and urged others to pass it on. “Sickening ” is how The Huf
fington Post described the development. Several other media outlets weighed in, too. CNN con- tributor Ana Navarro tweeted: “This is so painful for #SandyHook loved ones. I can’t control what @NBC or others do, but I control what I do. I will not watch @megynkelly.”
Kelly addressed the outcry, tweeting herself that President Trump has been on Jones’ radio program, the Alex Jones Show, and “praises” Jones. “He’s giving Infowars a WH press credential. Many don’t know him; our job is 2 shine a light,” she tweeted.
The InfoWars site draws more than 6 million unique global visi- tors a month, and his YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers. President Trump appeared on Jones’ show in December 2015 and has repeated some of Jones’ theories, including allegations of voter fraud in the presidential election.
In the interview preview, Kelly asks Jones if he is “the most paranoid man in America.”
“Absolutely not,” he says. “A paranoid person would be hiding out in their house, not venturing out in public. I go out there on the street and battle BlackLives- Matter (and) the communists at point-blank range.”
About Sandy Hook, Kelly tells Jones, “When you say parents faked their children’s death, people get very angry.”
His response: “They don’t get irate about the half-million dead Iraqis from sanctions ...” “That’s a dodge,” Kelly says. Jones adds: “Thirty years ago, they began creating animal-human hybrids. Isn’t that the big story Megan Kelly should be doing?”
NBC and Kelly’s booking of Jones is not necessarily inappropriate, says Angelo Carusone, president of liberal media activist group Media Matters. “There actually is a really compelling case to be made that you should shine a light on Alex Jones because of his relationship with the current president,” he said.
But Carusone expects that based on the preview and Kelly’s past performances — including last week’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin — “it appears that the reason of having Alex Jones on was not to really draw a meaningful critique of the way that the current president gets his information and who he gets it from.”
A softball interview “allows him to promote himself,” he said. “The idea he is on NBC, in and of itself, is a really big deal.”