An NBC Morning News Now segment aired the pro-Trump impeachment smears of an MSNBC Legal Analyst without disclosing that she was a donor to President Joe Biden.
Federal Election Commission records show that MSNBC Legal Analyst and NBC News Legal Contributor Cynthia Alksne contributed $444.93 directly to Biden’s campaign and $365.93 directly to the Biden Victory Fund during the 2020 election cycle. Alksne went on the Feb. 8 edition of Morning News Now on NBC to push impeachment against former President Donald Trump along with unhinged presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Alksne scorned the argument that Trump’s impeachment was unconstitutional as a “red herring.” Alksne then praised the Democrat impeachment managers by arguing that their case shows that Trump’s defense team was devoid of “facts.”
Of course, the network neglected to mention Alksne’s ties to Biden during that roughly 346-second segment.
Later in the segment, Alksne pressured Democrats to bring witnesses to Trump’s impeachment trial, arguing that they need to put pressure on twenty Republican Senators who could potentially flip the outcome:
We still need witnesses to bring [the case] to life for the American people and particularly to focus on those — say — twenty Republican senators and to put pressure on them through witnesses.
Perhaps the reason Alksne was haphazardly fawning over the Democratic case against Trump was precisely because she was a Biden donor.
Alksne’s website also noted that she’s married to Purple Strategies CEO and co-founder Steve McMahon, “a Democratic Strategist.” McMahon’s Democratic ties compound the problem of Alksne’s donations to Trump’s political opponent. NBC didn’t disclose McMahon’s occupation during the segment either.
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states that journalists should “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.” The fact that Alksne’s political ties weren’t disclosed during NBC News’s segment on a controversial impeachment process of a former president appears to violate this rule.
Alksne was also not the only MSNBC Legal Analyst to be tied to Biden. MSNBC Legal Analyst Jill Wine-Banks had also donated at least $2,800 to Biden March 10, 2020. Wine-Banks had the temerity to say that Trump was “a much more existential threat to democracy than Richard Nixon was” on the February 24, 2020 edition of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. Wine-Banks made those comments just about two weeks prior to her donation to Biden.
NBC and MSNBC clearly have no issue painting their Democrat donor legal analysts and contributors as objective even when their political donations show otherwise.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact NBC News (212-664-6192) and MSNBC at (800) 952-5210 and demand they disclose the political donations of their legal analysts and contributors and note any potential conflicts of interests.
