Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), the Democratic nominee to be the state’s next U.S. senator, suffered a stroke in May and is still struggling greatly with aspects of his recovery — a reality that much of the mainstream media has covered up or ignored and kept hidden from Pennsylvanians and the American people.
One intrepid reporter for NBC News, however, Dasha Burns, just offered the public a glimpse of Fetterman’s continued struggles, and for her effort, she has been attacked by other journalists and undermined by her own network, Breitbart reported.
Burns exposed the extent of Fetterman’s admitted “auditory processing” issues and his apparent inability to engage in conversation without the assistance of special closed captioning technology.
Fetterman struggles without closed captioning assistance
The report from Burns first aired Tuesday evening on “NBC Nightly News,” where she told anchor Lest Holt that “in small talk before the interview, without captioning, it wasn’t clear that he was understanding our conversation.”
Clips from the interview showed Fetterman struggling to pronounce certain words or complete sentences, and there was an obvious delay between her questions and his replies as he took the time to read and comprehend the scrolling words of the reporter’s remarks on a computer screen in front of him.
Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman sat down with @DashaBurns in an exclusive interview using closed captioning.
Fetterman discussed his recovery after suffering a stroke in the primaries and his race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. pic.twitter.com/0fee1cKXgY
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) October 11, 2022
Undermined by her own network colleagues
Burns, who is the first reporter to sit with Fetterman for an in-person interview since his stroke, shared her report on his recovery and campaign Wednesday morning on the “Today” show, yet her personal experience in that interview was instantly negated by co-host Savannah Guthrie, who said, “Since then, other journalists who also dealt with Fetterman came forward and said they had a different experience.”
The reporter attempted to defend herself, though, and said, “Myself, my producer, and our crew did find that small talk before that captioning was difficult because of the auditory processing issues I mentioned.”
She went on to note that “stroke experts” had suggested that the auditory processing issue didn’t necessarily signify that “his memory or cognition is impaired and he can fully recover and fully recover from this,” and added that Fetterman was “able to fully answer questions throughout that 25-minute interview” once the closed captioning had been made available for him.
Defending herself from fellow journalists and critics
As for the other journalists Guthrie referenced who had publicly attacked or contradicted Burns — despite none of them having the same sort of interaction with Fetterman as she had just had — the NBC reporter took to her own Twitter account to further defend herself and her report, both from attacks emanating from the left as well as misconceptions pushed by some on the right.
In response to a dismissive critique from New York Times reporter Kara Swisher, Burns tweeted, “It’s possible for two different reporters to have two different experiences w a candidate. Our team was in the room w him & reported what happened in it, as journalists do. Before & after closed captioning was on.”
Separately, Burns wrote of the interview overall, “We were happy to accommodate closed captioning. Our reporting did not and should not comment on fitness for office. This is for voters to decide. What we do push for as reporters is transparency. It’s our job. Fetterman sat down and answered our questions. That’s his job.”
