Three journalists from NBC and a Palestinian woman they were interviewing were attacked by Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly condemned the attackers, referring…
Page A13From§Eachthe early evening edition — 30 August 2026
Press freedom takes hits on two continents: Trump threatens NBC's Welker, settlers attack NBC crew.
As it ran on the front
You want to know how a democracy loses its eyes, watch the order it happens in. The President tells NBC's Kristen Welker she's getting 'punishment' for doing her job — not for getting it wrong, for doing it. Same week, three NBC journalists and a Palestinian woman get attacked by Israeli settlers in the West Bank while trying to film. Different continents, same instruction: the camera is the target, not because the footage lies but because it doesn't.
Nobody's coordinating a memo between the Oval Office and a hillside in the West Bank. They don't need to. When the loudest man in the room starts treating a press badge like an act of defiance, every guy with a rock and a grudge downstream gets the permission slip he was waiting for. That's not a conspiracy, that's just how weather works — you don't have to order the flood, you just have to stop building the levee.…
…(cont) Here's the stakes part, plain: the people who get hurt in this arrangement are never the ones giving the threats. It's the reporter standing in the road with a camera, and it's whoever she was there to film in the first place — in this case a Palestinian woman who didn't even get a press badge to hide behind. When the threat comes from the top down and the fist comes from the ground up, the guy in the middle, the one asking the question at the podium, he's the lucky one. He only loses his credential. Somebody else loses more.
And notice what never gets threatened: the story that flatters. Nobody in this administration has ever promised punishment to a network for running a segment he liked. The punishment is reserved, specifically, for the ones doing the job — asking the follow-up, standing in the road with the camera rolling when someone would rather it wasn't. That's not a free press under strain. That's a free press being told, in two different languages, on two different continents, in the same week, exactly what it costs to keep working.
“Threaten the reporter at home, and don't be shocked when the guy with a rock overseas figures he's got cover too. Different continents, same message: put the camera down.”
“The President's entitled to call out coverage he thinks is unfair same as anyone, that's not a threat, that's accountability. Punishment, sure, I said punishment — that word wasn't the best choice there, let me rephrase.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to threaten NBC journalist Kristen Welker with "rebuke or punishment" from the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, after she accurately reported that his endorsement had netted…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.