Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek credited the prayers of millions for helping him in a life-and-death struggle with stage-four pancreatic cancer.
Trebek faces a five-year survival rate of only three percent. However, his cancer is now in “near remission.”
Although ABC’s World News Tonight emphasized Trebek’s unshakable faith, NBC Nightly News edited out his comments.
NewsBusters reports:
Now let’s look at NBC’s edits. Correspondent Joe Fryer played the same soundbite of Trebek’s vow. But in this one, the NBC reporter spoke over the prayer part so it sounded like this: “I plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease.” And so the edit stood out in the video provided.
Next came the part where Fryer skipped over Trebek’s credits in the People magazine piece: “He tells People, “I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed good thoughts… I told the doctors this has to be more than just the chemo.” For Trebek, that support is part of the answer.” Compare that to what Muir said and what People magazine wrote.
As for CBS, fill-in anchor and Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan only had a news brief on the story in which the only quote from the magazine was that Trebek thought the turnaround was “mindboggling”:
There was some encouraging news today from Alex Trebek. The host of Jeopardy! says his doctors tell him that his stage-four pancreatic cancer is in, quote, “near remission.” In an interview with People magazine, Trebek calls the prognosis “mind-boggling” but says he has several more rounds of chemotherapy to go before he’s declared to be in full remission.