NBC News vs. ALG: Update…

The Politico’s Michael Calderone writes about the latest news, or lack thereof, in the NBC News/ALG email dispute…

It’s hard to believe that Stone—an NYU professor and 15-year network veteran—would write an email that said “Bite me Jew Boy!” It’s perhaps even more difficult to believe that the network news president would go on the record supporting his staffer without being 100 percent sure there was no wrongdoing.

Understandably, NBC doesn’t want to continue involving their producer in this spat, since as some computer experts have told me, it’s very difficult to prove either way without a third party arbiter looking through both systems. (And I’m far from a computer expert). The network declined to comment further.

“I think it’s a dead horse,” Clews said in an email. “We said what we had to say. They said what they had to say. The next step would be for NBC and ALG to work together to get to the bottom of it all, and they don’t seem to want to.”

It’s easy for ALG to back off now. But for Stone, there’s now an Internet trail linking her to a charge that hasn’t been proven. Shortly after ALG’s first press release went out, the allegation went viral through conservative blogs, Twitter, and later talk radio.

So after doing a whole bunch of chest thumping saying it was going to do this and do that, ALG ends up doing…nothing. NBC stood behind its Producer 100% but when it came to put up or shut up time, ALG has opted to shut up. Yet they still stand behind their charge. In my book, ALG’s action, or lack thereof, says a lot to me about how solid they really view this charge internally.

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