NBC’s Costello corrects report on taxes in health care bill
August 19, 2009 7:08 pm ET by Media Matters staff
Following Media Matters' item, NBC's Tom Costello corrects his report on the tax proposals in the House health care reform bill.
From Costello's August 19 post on NBC's The Daily Nightly blog:
On NBC Nightly News Tuesday, we tried to provide answers on how much the Health Care Reform proposal in the House would mean to American taxpayers. In short, how much will taxes go up?
As it stands, a House proposal would tax family incomes over $350,000 at one percent, with a maximum of $1,500 in additional tax. Family incomes over $500,000 would be taxed at 1.5 percent, up to $9,000. And family incomes over $1 million would be taxed at 5.4 percent, or $9,000+.
The tax rate climbs if certain savings are not realized.
The math is easy enough, but a simple mistake cascaded into a series of errors on our broadcast.
We applied the tax hike numbers to the entire income, rather than income over a certain threshold.
No political bias, just a simple, silly mistake. My mistake!
We'll set the record straight on NBC Nightly News tonight, as Lester Holt sits in.
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