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Articles on NBC

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A fan cheers for U.S. tennis players in the men’s doubles gold medal match during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano

Fandom usually means tracking your favorite team for years − so why are the Olympics so good at making us root for sports and athletes we tune out most of the time?

Patriotic coverage helps forge the Olympics’ sense of community, weaving viewers’ lives together with athletes’ struggles and triumphs.
The moment Lester Holt of NBC News cut into a statement from President Donald Trump. NBC News via YouTube

Has Donald Trump had his Joe McCarthy moment?

When President Trump claimed in a press conference that the election was being stolen from him, three major TV networks cut off their coverage. A media scholar asks if this is a turning point.
‘Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!’ was a funky, lighthearted alternative to the action cartoons that, for years, had dominated Saturday morning lineups. GeekDad

The strange connection between Bobby Kennedy’s death and Scooby-Doo

Demands for regulation of media violence reached a fever pitch after RFK’s assassination, and networks scrambled to insert more kid-friendly fare into their lineups. Enter: the Mystery Machine.
The Starship Enterprise, the famed setting of the original ‘Star Trek’ series, was almost lost to the graveyard of failed pilots. alanoodle.com

How ‘Star Trek’ almost failed to launch

With a pilot that was deemed too complex and cerebral, ‘Star Trek’ looked dead in the water. Fifty years later, we look back at the show’s rocky beginnings.
Add a hashtag, join the Olympics conversation. Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Will social media define the success of the Olympic Games?

The mainstream media has knocked Brazil for the Zika virus, doping scandals and safety concerns. But citizen social media users, by revealing an alternate narrative, could even the score for Rio.
NBC newscaster John Cameron Swayze was television’s first “anchor man” – though not for presenting the news. The term referred to his status as permanent panelist of the quiz show Who Said That? Wikimedia Commons

The origins of the all-powerful news anchor

In the beginning, newscasters weren’t even visible to TV news viewers. With Walter Cronkite, everything changed.
Brian Williams Phil McCarten/Reuters

Brian Williams, the military and American culture

Credibility, generally, is seen as a dividend of honesty. Tell the truth and, over time, people will come to regard you as a trustworthy person, a reliable source of information. Given this formula, the…
Jon Stewart’s tenure at The Daily Show may ultimately be remembered more for how he skewered the mainstream media than for the laughs he generated. Jason Reed/Reuters

The Daily Show was never ‘real’ news – but came (depressingly) close

Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid…

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