USA · Bias: Center-left
NBCUniversal (Comcast)
Who owns NBC News? Comcast, for now. NBC News, home to Nightly News, Today, Meet the Press and Dateline, is the news division of NBCUniversal, and NBCUniversal belongs to Comcast, the giant American cable and internet company. But that is about to change: in June 2026 Comcast said it will split NBCUniversal off into its own company. Comcast's ownership means the same company that lobbies Washington on telecom, cable and streaming policy is also the one whose news division decides how those very policy fights get covered. OWNERSHIP AS OF OCTOBER 2026 Short answer to "who owns NBC News": Comcast Corporation, through NBCUniversal. Comcast is listed on the stock market, so anyone can buy shares, but the Roberts family has long held about a third of the votes through a special class of shares. Brian Roberts is Comcast's chairman and co-CEO. Two big changes in one year. First, in January 2026 Comcast finished spinning off most of its cable channels, including MSNBC (now MS NOW) and CNBC, into a new listed company called Versant. So NBC News and MS NOW are no longer the same company. Second, on 29 June 2026 Comcast announced it will separate into two listed companies by spinning off NBCUniversal and Sky. That package includes the NBC network, Telemundo, Peacock, the film and TV studios, the theme parks and, inside it all, NBC News. Mike Cavanagh is set to be CEO of the new NBCUniversal. Comcast says Brian Roberts will "continue to be actively involved in the leadership of Comcast and NBCUniversal," and that the new company will keep the same two-class share structure. Comcast also plans to hold on to up to 19.9% for up to a year. The deal is expected to close around mid-2027 and still needs final board and regulatory approval (Comcast press release filed with the SEC, 29 June 2026; Comcast quarterly report, June 2026). Until then, nothing changes: NBC News is a Comcast newsroom. Who runs it day to day: Cesar Conde is chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group. Rebecca Blumenstein, who came from The New York Times, has led NBC News's editorial side since January 2023. IS NBC NEWS LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading: a little left of centre in the stories it picks, but close to the middle in how it writes them. That is our opinion, not a measurement. The habit we notice most is not about parties at all. NBC likes safe, official-sounding headlines, and sometimes the safe word leaves out the news. Seven dated examples from our archive, good and bad: On 21 July 2026, the FDA said one lab test on Taylor Farms lettuce was a false positive, but that it still linked the lettuce to an outbreak that made 1,644 people sick. NBC's headline carried only the false positive. The Washington Post fitted both facts in one line. On 6 August 2026, the FCC scrapped the limit on how many TV stations one company can own. NBC's report was solid. But we noted the page never told readers that NBC's own parent company owns TV stations covered by that rule. On 15 August 2026, President Trump said "I'll be declaring" the Strait of Hormuz a US territory. NBC's headline said he "wants" it to be one. In our view, those are different verbs. On 24 August 2026, NBC's headline said Trump "hits back" at Canada's prime minister. The article itself said the US tariffs had started first, two days earlier. On 30 August 2026, we noted that NBC's Tuesday headline said two people "die of measles" in Pennsylvania, while the officials it cited had used the careful term "measles-associated." By Thursday, we thought NBC had written the clearest headline of anyone on the same story. Credit where due. On 4 September 2026, NBC's headline on a deadly strike on a wedding party in Iran began "Iran says." The same week, its headlines on US strikes carried no "Pentagon says." We thought the hedge was fair on day one, and had stayed too long by day four. On 12 September 2026, we praised a headline with no drama at all: "Your health insurance bills are about to go up." It walked readers through what each kind of plan would cost them. That is what news is for. IS NBC NEWS RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? Yes, you can cite it. NBC News is a large, professional newsroom with a standards team, and when it gets things wrong it tends to say so in public. That public record is the useful part. In 2015, NBC suspended its main anchor, Brian Williams, for six months after his Iraq War helicopter story fell apart (more on that below). In May 2022, NBC News told readers it had found 11 articles by one reporter that used passages from other news outlets without credit; it put an editor's note on each one. In November 2022, it pulled a Today show report about the attack on Paul Pelosi and said the piece "did not meet NBC News reporting standards." One thing to know: there is no US press regulator like Britain's IPSO or Ofcom that rules on news accuracy. The FCC licenses TV stations, not newsrooms. So the record above is made of NBC's own corrections, not outside rulings. And an honest note about us: what we write here is our own reading of headlines, not a scientific score. For homework or a serious argument, cite the NBC article itself, check the date, and look for an editor's note at the bottom. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns NBC News? Comcast, through NBCUniversal. Comcast announced on 29 June 2026 that it will spin NBCUniversal off as a separate company, expected around mid-2027. Is NBC News liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? It is not tied to any party. In our view its news coverage sits a little left of centre. Don't confuse it with MSNBC, now called MS NOW, which runs openly liberal opinion shows. It moved, with CNBC, to a different company in January 2026. Is NBC News reliable and credible? In our view, yes, for facts. It corrects mistakes in public. Read past the headline, though, because that is where we find most of our complaints. Who owns NBC, CBS and ABC? Three different companies. NBC belongs to Comcast, ABC to Disney and CBS to Paramount. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 3 October 2026: added Comcast's June 2026 plan to spin off NBCUniversal, the January 2026 Versant split, current leadership, seven dated examples from our archive and NBC's public corrections record.
For over a decade, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told and retold a dramatic story about his helicopter being hit by an RPG while covering the Iraq War in 2003. The problem: it wasn't his helicopter that got hit — it was one flying ahead of him, and Williams was nowhere near enemy fire. The motive seems to have been simple ego, building his own legend one retelling at a time. When soldiers who were actually on that mission called him out publicly in 2015, then-NBC News President Deborah Turness suspended America's top-rated anchor for six months without pay. Williams never fully recovered his old perch — he moved to MSNBC before leaving the network entirely in 2021.