White House hopeful Andrew Yang cried foul after NBC News left his name off a list of the top-ranking Democratic presidential candidates before reversing course Friday.
The incident marked the second time in as many weeks Mr. Yang, a businessman currently polling among the top 10 candidates, complained about being omitted from network coverage.
In the latest instance, Mr. Yang took to Twitter late Thursday night to share a recent NBC News segment advertising next week’s third Democratic presidential primary debate in which he has qualified to participate alongside nine other candidates.
Mr. Yang tweeted an image from the NBC News segment that claimed to list the 10 participating candidates but only included nine names: all but his.
NBC News “may have miscounted,” Mr. Yang said on Twitter.
Indeed, several NBC News reporters quickly acknowledged the error and publicly apologized to Mr. Yang on Twitter. The network has since updated a version of the video hosted on the NBC News website and issued a correction.
“There’s no excuse for it and it’s my responsibility to check any graphic that I go on-air with, so I apologize for this screw-up,” tweeted Steve Kornacki, an NBC News personality who appeared in the segment. “I owe viewers, candidates and their supporters information that is 100% reliable.”
“Thanks Steve - appreciate your professionalism and responsiveness,” replied Mr. Yang. “These things happen.”
Mr. Yang, a 44-year-old tech entrepreneur, qualified to compete in next Thursday’s primary debate by securing donations from 130,000 unique contributors and polling at or above 2% in four different polls approved by the Democratic National Committee.
Polling released last Wednesday by Quinnipiac University found that 3% of Democratic voters recently surveyed said Mr. Yang was their candidate of choice, effectively ranking him in sixth place behind former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, Sen. Kamala Harris, California Democrat, and Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
CNN subsequently reported on the Quinnipiac survey last week by airing an image that listed six top Democratic candidates but did not include Mr. Yang. The image listed the top five ranking candidates, per Quinnipiac, and Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas who received only 1% in the same poll.
“I’ll admit I’ve never been a politician before, but the treatment of our rising national poll results has been odd and confusing,” Mr. Yang said at the time.
Randy Jones, Mr. Yang’s campaign spokesman, later said CNN apologized and promised it would no longer use the image, Business Insider reported.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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