Politics

NBC News Wrongly Claims Sen. Menendez Is A Republican

Amber Athey Podcast Columnist
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NBC News has published an article incorrectly claiming that New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — who is on trial for corruption — is a Republican.

Menendez is actually a Democrat, yet in the lead of an article from Wednesday, NBC falsely identified him as a Republican. Confusingly, they later called him a Democrat in the same sentence.

The article appears to be a wire from the Associated Press, but the original piece on AP’s website does not feature the mistake, suggesting it was added in by NBC.

NBC News Identifies Sen. Menendez as GOP (NBC)

The senator’s trial for multiple fraud and bribery charges began on Wednesday.

The New York Times was recently criticized for leaving Menendez’s party affiliation out of a 1300 word piece on the trial. The backlash led them to update the article with his party affiliation, but it still is not mentioned until the fourth paragraph. (RELATED: NYT Writes 1300 Words About Dem Senator’s Corruption Trial Without Mentioning He’s A Democrat) 

UPDATE (5:43PM):

NBC News corrected the mistake at 5:35 PM, writing, “An earlier version of this article misstated the party affiliation of Menendez. He is a Democrat, not a Republican.” The piece was up for several hours before the error was fixed.

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