NBC News reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser claimed Tuesday that she did not “collaborate” with an activist organization — despite initially calling its efforts “collaboration” — on a story about Google banning the libertarian website ZeroHedge from its ad platform and threatening the conservative website The Federalist with the same fate unless it removed its comment section.
Fraser originally reported that both The Federalist and ZeroHedge were barred from Google’s ad platform after NBC News’ “Verification Unit” presented the technology giant with research from a left-wing group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which calls on digital advertisers to financially blacklist conservatives websites, including Breitbart News.
However, a Google spokesperson dispelled part of the report. “The Federalist is not currently demonetized. We do have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on, which includes comments on the site. This is a longstanding policy,” said the spokesperson.
The Federalist has temporarily deleted its comment section to remain on Google’s ad platform.
In a Tuesday tweet publicizing her report, Fraser originally wrote: “NEW — from @NBC_VC. Thanks to @SFFakeNews [Stop Funding Fake News] and @CCDHate [Center for Countering Digital Hate] for their hard work and collaboration!”
NEW — from @NBC_VC. Thanks to @SFFakeNews and @CCDHate for their hard work and collaboration! https://t.co/dorhdZy1t1
— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 16, 2020
Hours after the admission, Fraser claimed that she did “not collaborate on the research itself” and accused Google of misstating that The Federalist had been banned from its ad network.
1/ To clarify this earlier tweet, we obtained this research exclusively from @SFFakeNews but we did not collaborate on the research itself. https://t.co/RH4TeZJSYr
— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 17, 2020
The parsing of this denial — merely that NBC News did not assist with “research” on the targeted news sites — does not answer critics’ charges that Fraser herself may have intended to bring about their financial downfall. Sean Davis, a co-founder of The Federalist, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that, from his perspective, NBC “partnered with a foreign left-wing group in Europe to go after us and to use Google to go after us.”
Mollie Hemingway, Senior Editor at the Federalist, excoriated Fraser for her denial, satirically paraphrasing the social media post to allege it was merely damage control. “[W]hen I explicitly thanked these shady foreign groups for their ‘hard work and collaboration!’ in a conspiracy I led to silence and punish media organizations I personally oppose, I didn’t realize how poorly it would go for me and so now I’m trying and failing to walk it back,” Hemingway wrote to Fraser.
"when I explicitly thanked these shady foreign groups for their 'hard work and collaboration!' in a conspiracy I led to silence and punish media organizations I personally oppose, I didn't realize how poorly it would go for me and so now I'm trying and failing to walk it back."
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) June 17, 2020
As Breitbart News reported Tuesday, Fraser previously interned for Qatar-based Al Jazeera network early in her career, according to LinkedIn. She has since held jobs at CBS News, the BBC, Channel 4, and Sky News.
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