NBC’s Confused Week: Jewish Protester Happens to Die, Hamas Propagandist Deemed Reliable, and Hunter Ruled Off-Limits

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we review NBC’s rough week, look at Vox’s attempt to downplay inflation, and cover more media misses.

An Embarrassing Week for NBC

NBC was the subject of swift backlash online this week after it quietly changed a headline about a fatal altercation between an elderly Jewish man and pro-Palestinian protesters and offered a confusing “fact-check” of a claim from Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

“Man dies after hitting head during Israel and Palestinian rallies in California, officials say,” NBC reported, failing to acknowledge that Paul Kessler was Jewish and that an altercation occurred in the lead up to the incident.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that Kessler “was in a physical altercation with counter-protestor(s)” when he “fell backwards and struck his head on the ground.”

The county medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death to be blunt-force head injury and the manner of death homicide, though that does not necessarily mean criminal activity was involved. The medical examiner said Kessler had non-lethal injuries to his face and a lethal injury to the back of his head consistent with a fall.

A witness to the altercation between Kessler and the pro-Palestinian protester said the suspect “stalked” him and Kessler during the protest, recording them with his phone and harassing them with a bullhorn.

NBC later updated its headline to read: “Jewish man dies after hitting head in altercation at dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies in California.”

Authorities said they do not yet have enough evidence to bring charges in the incident and said they had received “conflicting” eyewitness accounts of the altercation that occurred between Kessler and the man suspected of killing him. However, the sheriff’s office has not ruled out a hate crime.

Witness Jonathan Oswaks told reporters that he received a call from a friend who saw his face on a live social-media feed, to let him know he was “being watched.” Oswaks looked over and saw three men sitting on a bench. He believed the men were recording the live video. Oswaks claimed he recognized one of the men as the one who caused Kessler to fall and hit his head.

“One of those men I recognize as the murderer,” Oswaks said. “The other man was an extreme agitator. The other fellow was just a young fellow, I couldn’t tell much about him.”

For NBC, the headline was just the first in a trio of missteps last week. It later fell back into its regularly scheduled attacks against Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

After the third Republican presidential debate last week, NBC offered a “fact-check” of the governor’s claim that he evacuated over 700 Americans out of Israel.

While the “fact-check” ultimately confirms the claim, it confusingly rates DeSantis’s comment “half-true.”

“DeSantis signed an executive order that allowed the Florida Division of Emergency Management to pay for Americans in Israel to fly back to the U.S. But the flights were organized by a nonprofit, and DeSantis’ primary role was to fund the flights. Nearly 700 people were evacuated, according to the governor’s office,” the fact-check explains:

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Fact-checking Ron DeSantis' claim that he evacuated over 700 Americans out of Israel. https://t.co/ecNuIWbPji pic.twitter.com/yLPA7GGTH3

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 9, 2023

And in a separate article, NBC attempted to call out DeSantis’s alleged hypocrisy on the issue of attacking presidential candidates’ kids, when he has gone after President Biden’s son, Hunter.

“Ron DeSantis says it’s ‘out of bounds’ to attack candidates’ kids — except for Hunter Biden,” a headline from the outlet reads.

“But out on the campaign trail, the governor does not shy from making a punchline out of Hunter Biden, 53, joking about his history of addiction and embarrassing details of his personal life that have surfaced publicly,” the article says.

This despite 53-year-old Hunter Biden being older than the 45-year-old governor and having allegedly used his father’s name to secure lucrative foreign business deals. The committee says financial records show the family created a complex web of more than 20 shell companies “in a concerted effort to hide payments from foreign adversaries.” The family, its business associates, and their companies raked in more than $24 million from foreign nationals over a period of five years. That includes millions of dollars from China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan.

Therefore, Hunter Biden’s behavior and business dealings may have a direct impact on his father’s governance. Just last week, the committee released bank records that purportedly show a complicated series of money transfers that ultimately resulted in President Biden receiving $40,000 that originated with a Chinese company affiliated with CEFC China Energy.

By contrast, DeSantis’s comment about not attacking candidates’ kids came in response to Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to mention Nikki Haley’s daughter during the GOP primary debate last week.

“I wanna laugh at why Nikki Haley didn’t answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye. In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok, well her own daughter was using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first,” Ramaswamy said.

“Leave my daughter out of your voice!” Haley replied. “You’re just scum!”

Still, despite the missteps of NBC this week, MSNBC was not to be outdone and chose to air footage that was shot by a pro-Hamas social-media influencer with a well-documented record of attacking Israel as an “apartheid” state.

MSNBC aired a segment based upon the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry’s assertions that the Israeli military bombed the Al-Shifa Hospital five times between Thursday and Friday. Israel believes the hospital is the location of a Hamas base.

During the segment, MSNBC showed a first-person video featuring social-media influencer Saleh Aljafarawi, which shows his hands covered in blood as he shouts in Arabic, “We carried them with our hands . . . our hands. They bombed them . . . bombed them inside the hospital. Oh God, oh God, please God, have mercy on us.”

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MSNBC features a video recorded by a known Hamas-linked crisis actor.
Host Chris Jansing quotes him like he's an innocent civilian.
The man in the video has appeared in other videos as a doctor, dying in a hospital, and a rescue worker, among other roles. pic.twitter.com/ARdilmzxyK

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2023

The outlet treats Aljafarawi as any regular witness and fails to disclose that he has a history in peddling pro-Hamas propaganda on social media. Israel’s official X account called attention to a clip where Aljafarawi celebrates the firing of rockets toward Israel, grinning and shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is most great.”

The Israeli government has accused Aljafarawi of being a “crisis actor” as he appears to have taken on different roles in varying social-media posts.

Headline Fail of the Week

Vox attempts to downplay Americans’ concerns about the economy in a piece titled, “The problem isn’t inflation. It’s prices.”

“The root of what’s going on here can feel obvious: blame inflation, which picked up in mid-2021 and throughout 2022. But that isn’t really the issue anymore, at least not at the current rate, because inflation is coming down. The actual problem here is prices,” the article reads.

“They’re not going up nearly as much as they were in, say, the middle of last year, but they’re by and large not declining en masse, either. And in most cases, they won’t get back to where they were in the Before Times,” it adds.

Media Misses

• The Washington Post took down a political cartoon mocking Hamas after backlash from staffers and readers. The cartoon, Human Shields, showed a Hamas spokesperson saying, “How dare Israel attack civilians,” while a woman and four small children were bound with rope to his body. The cartoonist behind the piece, Michael Ramirez, defended his work, telling Fox News: “I think it’s empirically true that Hamas uses civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, as human shields. I don’t think it’s a hidden knowledge that they operate their bases in densely populated areas and under civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, they fire rockets from densely residential areas, and by design, to sacrifice the lives of the innocent people.” The Las Vegas Review-Journal stood behind the cartoon.
• CNN suspended ties with freelance photojournalist Hassan Eslaiah after a photo purportedly showed a top Hamas leader kissing the photographer on the cheek. Watchdog group HonestReporting published the photo of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the October 7 massacre, kissing Eslaiah. The group reported that Eslaiah and other photojournalists were embedded with Hamas terrorists on the day they attacked Israel last month.“We are aware of the article and photo concerning Hassan Eslaiah, a freelance photojournalist who has worked with a number of international and Israeli outlets. While we have not at this time found reason to doubt the journalistic accuracy of the work he has done for us, we have decided to suspend all ties with him,” CNN said.
• The Jerusalem Post says the Israel–Hamas war is a great opportunity for weight loss: “Fears of rockets and missiles amid Israel’s war with Hamas putting millions of Israelis in a constant state of anxiety and stress. But you can actually use this stress to lose weight and stay healthy.” The outlet later deleted a post on X sharing the article.