USA · Bias: Center-left
NBCUniversal (Comcast)
Home to NBC Nightly News (around 6.3 million nightly viewers) and Today, NBC News is the broadcast backbone of what used to be a much bigger family. Its cable sibling MSNBC — literally a 1996 joint venture between NBC and Microsoft, hence the name — rebranded as MS NOW and spun off into the standalone Versant Media Group in January 2026, leaving NBC News alone under NBCUniversal and Comcast. Comcast's ownership means the same company that spends heavily lobbying Washington on telecom, cable, and streaming policy is also the one whose news division decides how those very policy fights get covered.
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.