NBC Nightly News interviewed a woman at CPAC about the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are legally children. The network did not mention that the woman, Dawn Bancroft, previously pleaded guilty in federal court to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to 60 days in prison for her participation in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
During its February 22 edition, NBC Nightly News broadcast two stories about the continuing fallout from the court’s decision, which has imperiled patients’ access to in vitro fertilization treatments in Alabama. In its second story — which connected the ruling to reproductive rights as a broader political issue — NBC’s reporter went to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major annual right-wing event, to gather reactions from right-wing women. “Women we spoke to were in full support of IVF,” said the reporter.
NBC aired the opinion of only one woman — Bancroft, a convicted January 6 rioter whom a chyron identified merely as “Doylestown, Pennsylvania resident.”
NBC News covered Bancroft’s sentencing in 2022, also noting that she was from Doylestown:
A Jan. 6 Capitol rioter who recorded herself saying that they were looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “to shoot her in the frickin’ brain” was sentenced Thursday to 60 days in prison, according to officials.
The attorney for Dawn Bancroft, 59, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, asked for a fine only but a federal judge in Washington sentenced her to the 60 days in prison that prosecutors sought, according to court records.
Prosecutors called her comments about killing Pelosi “among the most graphic statements uttered by any rioter on Capitol grounds that day,” but acknowledged there was no evidence she intended to carry it out.
“Be that as it may, just as Bancroft felt herself caught up in the negative energy of the day, her reckless words could have easily led or inspired others to act violently towards members of Congress or police officers,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
Even Bancroft admitted the Alabama ruling was “disturbing.”
NBC has every right to interview CPAC attendees for its political stories. However, the network has a duty to disclose to its audience whether those attendees violently attacked the Capitol and publicly called for the murder of Democrats.
