Amidst all the glowing coverage of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner long-haul jet, America's NBC Nightly News stood out last night as more enraptured of the aircraft than most. Eschewing independent interviewees, the NBC piece ran like a Boeing promotional film, with the company's spokespeople being given a free hand to plug their admittedly lovely jet.
Such effusive praise on a news program- praise that extended beyond the usual gee-whizzery of engineering reporting on TV- struck me as a little odd but I had a hunch as to why they were doing it. I checked my hunch on line this morning, and sure enough:
"Boeing has selected two engine types, the General Electric GENX and the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000, each type developing 55,000lb to 70,000lb thrust."
NBC television is owned by General Electric. Although I'm sure the idea of using their news programming to run puff pieces designed to promote their projects and collaborations and thus potentially improve their share price never crossed their minds.
2 comments:
excellent piece of investigative journalism. I was watching Brian last night and totally missed this.
Ok, I'm back to my NBC/MSNBC boycott
Its Court TV I feel sorry for. Part owned by the makers of Ex-Lax, they have to refer to police informants as 'stool pigeons'.
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