A reporter is accusing the managing editor of NBC News and MSNBC’s political coverage of trying to “intimidate” him into spiking a story about the Democratic National Committee in a chilling phone conversation that he says had her acting as a political operative and not a fellow journalist.
Yashar Ali, a high-profile freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Huffington Post and New York magazine, said he was so taken aback by his conversation with Dafna Linzer, who has held the key NBC position since October 2015, that he posted his synopsis of it in a series of tweets Friday. Linzer, he said, was trying to block him from publishing the dates of the 2020 Democratic Party primary debates – a move Ali suspects was made to benefit the DNC, not her employers.
“Yesterday, I received a call from @DafnaLinzer who serves as managing editor of NBC/MSNBC politics. Dafna’s conduct during the call was highly inappropriate and unethical. So what was the purpose of her call? She called me to bully me on behalf of the DNC,” the first tweet read.
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“Dafna, who oversees the political coverage for NBC and MSNBC, was calling to bully me into delaying the publication of an innocuous scoop and at no point did she advocate for her network, it was only about the DNC.” – READ MORE