NASCAR Revved by NBC Planned Stunt

NBC Dateline is scheming to paint red-state NASCAR fans as bigots by sending Muslim-looking males into the crowds at this weekend's race in Texas. An NBC camera crew is being sent to capture the presumed American redneck intolerance for Muslims. Michelle Malkin exposed the NBC plan to script the news and nobody is amused. The director of corporate communications for NASCAR, Ramsey Poston, has called it "outrageous."

I'd rank staged "gotcha journalism" as worse than "ambush reporting" and almost as bad as "fake but accurate" analyses. What's happened to journalism? If NBC wants to pump up its ratings, it should try objectivity and truth. The lead-in to Dateline should be changed from "Here are tonight's stories" to "Look who we Punk'd."

As an interesting and amusing side note on this story, Chad Evans points out that the NBC staff recruiters who looked for Muslim candidates to pull off the scheme seem to have been unaware that Sikhs, an offshoot of Hinduism, are not Muslims nor are they Arabs. NBC previously attempted to demonstrate discrimination against Muslims by filming fans' reactions to turbaned Sikhs. This would be like sending in a drag queen to show bias against women. Obviously, if NBC concentrated on reporting what actually occurs throughout the world, as opposed to making stuff up, its staffers would probably know more about it.