Narrow-minded, Bigoted, and Condescending. - Jim Treacher

Nothing But Crass. - Lucianne.com commenter RayLRiv.

National Broadcasting Caliphate. - Craig H.

No Brain Capacity. - R. Carty

Nimrods Bearing Credentials. - Flip

Feel free to play along.

***

And here’s NBC Dateline host Stone Phillips at a NY fashion week event last year (via TVNewser):

Was he being sent undercover, too?

***

Thomas Lifson: “Sometimes I wonder how the people at NBC manage to look at themselves in the mirror when they wake up in the morning. They are contemptible.”

Duane Cross at NASCAR.com reports:

NBC News should know that NASCAR isn’t the last bastion of redneck; the people at NBC Sports thought so much of NASCAR — and its diverse fan base — that it chipped in with TNT to spend $1.2 billion for broadcast rights the past six years.

Mike Smith, director of public relations for Martinsville Speedway, said that the Dateline crew’s presence wasn’t as stealth as it possibly hoped.

“Our security knew almost immediately that [the Dateline crew] were on site and they were monitored the whole time they were here, for obvious reasons — their protections, fans protection — and they were not disturbed,” Smith said. “It says a lot about our fans.

“If there is an upside, it shows that the image so many people have of NASCAR fans is a false one, and it shows that not only at Martinsville Speedway, but at NASCAR tracks in general, it shows what type of security we have in place that can discover something like this, observe it and make sure nothing happens.

“We’ve gotten calls [Thursday] from fans praising our security and wanting the number for Dateline,” Smith said. “As disappointed as we are, we feel pretty good about the end result.”

Take a bow, NASCAR Nation.

Hear, hear.

Newsbusters’ Greg Sheffield reports that Dateline has no problem offending…Christians.

Angelique S. Chengelis at the Detroit News slams NBC:

Q . NASCAR confirmed that “Dateline NBC” was at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last weekend with a camera crew and “Muslim-looking” men trying to gauge reaction to the men. What could the network and the show producers have been thinking?

A . It would be naive to say that no network or news organization has ever tried to manufacture news. But this … this is ridiculous. Talk about cliches and stereotypes clashing. Who thought up this one?

OK, let’s take Muslim-looking men to a NASCAR track, where the fans are typically racist, right? Oh, please.

Demographic studies have shown how diverse the NASCAR audience has become. The sport has shrugged off its “redneck” image and is now as mainstream as, well, the NFL. Almost.

Regardless, NASCAR officials rightfully were offended by this show’s approach and are happy to report that as far as they know, the Muslim-looking men didn’t even draw a sneer from the crowd. How interesting all of this is, though, considering NASCAR is in the last year of a television deal with NBC.

WSLS reports that Muslims have been asked to participate in other journalistic “experiments:”

Martinsville Speedway becomes a test site for tolerance. NBC’s Dateline sent what they call Muslim looking men to the race to see how fans would react.

Ahmed Sidky: “How do you identify a Muslim looking man? We don’t go around with those robes or a turban on our heads.”

When we talked to Ahmed Sidky and Adam Daken, both Muslim students at Virginia Tech, they were wearing blue jeans and casual shirts. They say they’ve been asked to participate in experiments, like Dateline’s, before but said no.

USA Today reports that NBC is retreating from its NASCAR stings, but will continue with news-staging elsewhere:

After bringing Muslim men to Martinsville Speedway in Virginia to gauge the reaction of NASCAR fans, Dateline NBC won’t have its cameras at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend.

Be forewarned: They’ve only just begun.

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Where in the world
NASCAR smacks down NBC
News sting ideas of the day
All the news that’s fit to stage
NBC: Staging the news again?

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