NBC News video featuring kids terrified about Trump comes under fire

Classroom desks used at Decker College await auction Friday, Feb. 10, 2006 at the site of the former school in Louisville, Ky. Decker, a for-profit trade school run by former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, is now closed, mired in bankruptcy proceedings and under FBI investigation in a case that has cast a long shadow over Weld's bid to become the next governor of New York. (AP Photo/Brian Bohannon) (AP2006)

A pair of NBC News videos featuring kids expressing fears about Donald Trump’s presidency is coming under fire by conservatives who call it “propaganda.”

The videos show kids saying things such as “Most of my family is black. I’m afraid that you’re gonna hurt some of us blacks,” “You are here, attempting to white-wash America,” “You’re going to separate me away from the rest of my family, and I really don’t want [that] because I love them too much.”

The videos begin with one youth offering faint praise, then continue with a barrage of children expressing despair and fear over Trump and his policies.

The conservative outlet CNS ran a story that said: “NBC News handpicked anti-Trump tykes for two propaganda videos to make it appear that every child in America thinks President Trump is an ignorant racist and threat to the country.”

CNS said NBC seems to have gone out of its way to present all children as being terrified of a Trump-led nation.

NBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ABC News also produced a video right before the inauguration in which children addressed Trump, but its project showed children who showed enthusiasm or hope about the new president, as well as others who expressed concerns.

“The technique of doing it is not new,” Jeffrey Seglin, director of Harvard Kennedy School Communications Program, told Fox News. “It’s been done for years, it’s a feature piece.”

Seglin said the NBC News piece did not strike him as intentionally created to be anti-Trump. Noting that the students all seem to be in the same setting, Seglin said he would have had liked to have known what part of the country the network went to for the videos.

Seglin noted, however, that while ABC News did a similar project, its handling of having children address the new president was decidedly more even-handed.

“In the ABC video, there are very different views” expressed by the children, he said.