Connecticut’s NBC affiliate, WVIT, broke with the network last night by refusing to run Megyn Kelly’s interview with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a staged event created to promote tougher gun control laws.
But here’s the thing: “Alex Jones isn’t going away”, she said on “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly“.
Relatives of the shooting victims have called Jones’ comments hurtful and said he has encourage people to harass them. But he continued to express doubts, saying that he looked at footage of children leaving the building and thought it looked like a “drill”. “But then you look at all the other evidence on the other side, I could see how other people believe that nobody died there”. In the interview, Jones never gave a direct answer when Kelly pressed him to admit he was wrong and continued to raise questions about the shootings.
Now, Jones said, “I tend to believe that children probably did die there”.
To her credit, Kelly was aggressive in her questioning of Jones’ public comments during the segment itself, which drew from hours of sit-down conversations with Jones.
Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan also noted the editing of the interview on her Twitter account.
Megyn Kelly stepped into a hornet’s nest with her Alex Jones interview, seemingly placing NBC News and its new star in a no-win situation.
“Kelly’s segment throughout the week and have gambled millions of dollars on her success”.
Jones dubbed the interview as “fake news” before it even aired, and started releasing secretly recording recordings with Kelly in an attempt to show her dishonesty in the process. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack told the AP that the Jones story would be edited with its critics in mind.
Setting the cautionary aspects of dealing with such a personality aside, “Sunday Night” can only be judged by what made it onto the screen, which began with Kelly promising to “confront [Jones] on his notorious lie about the Sandy Hook massacre”. While it might sound like unusual advice regarding an anchor who has spent the past year in the spotlight, NBC’s best hope would be to finish “Sunday Night’s” summer run without any more major waves, and hope for a fresh start when her morning program makes its debut in the fall.
Kelly’s old employer needled her over the weekend, sending a tweet headlined “Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones: NBC News under fire for “botched” rollout”.