GO TO THE TAPE

Fox News Guest Falsely Accuses NBC of Censoring Her Cuomo Criticism

A full review of the footage in question appears to contradict Dawn Best’s claim of a network reporter’s meddling.

A Fox News guest’s claim that NBC News censored her criticism of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during an interview appears to be false, Mediaite reported Monday based on a full review of the exchange in question.

Dawn Best, whose mother died last April in a New York nursing home, told Fox & Friends on Monday morning that an NBC reporter forced her to place the blame for a March 2020 directive—which essentially forced nursing homes to readmit COVID-19 patients—on the state rather than on the Democratic governor. “So what happened specifically on that show was I was telling them that Governor Cuomo failed us,” Best claimed, adding: “She stopped me and she said to me, ‘Can you say that a different way without Governor Cuomo’s name and just say, New York failed you?’ So I had no choice. I had to say New York failed me.”

But according to Mediaite’s review of the full video provided to them by an NBC source, it was actually Best who offered to change her answer. “I didn’t say that as well as I could,” Best told NBC reporter Kristen Dahlgren. “If you want to ask me in a different way I could.”

Best’s friend Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist who has been highly critical of Cuomo’s COVID-19 policies as her in-laws died from coronavirus in a nursing home, tweeted days earlier that NBC “censored one of my friends who lost a loved one in a nursing home” and that the mainstream press was “protecting” Cuomo. A Fox News source told the Daily Beast that Fox & Friends reached out to NBC News for comment prior to airing Best’s claims but that the network didn't respond.