UPDATE: NBC goes hunting for racists at Martinsville... and comes up empty

Here's a story in the USA Today in which NBC defends its tactics.

And in this one, NASCAR goes on the offensive, congratulating its patrons for not taking NBC's bait. Something tells me they're not happy with their broadcast partner.

From the NASCAR article, by B. Dwayne Cross:

NBC News baited the hook, but netted nothing in its "sting" attempt to find anti-Muslim sentiments during the Martinsville race weekend.

By its own admission NBC News was so "intrigued by the results of a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll and other articles regarding increasing anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States" that it decided to make the news, rather than merely report.

NASCAR's governing body called a network television news magazine "outrageous" on Wednesday, saying it tried to provoke anti-Muslim reactions from spectators at last week's race for a story about growing U.S. sentiment against Islam.

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin on Monday posted an e-mail -- an apparent solicitation to Muslim groups -- on her Web site. Malkin does not work for NBC, but posted the e-mail under the heading "NBC: Staging the news again?" The e-mail, written by Tarek El-Messidi but not authorized by NBC News, in part said:

I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA. They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed.

They recently taped two turbaned Sikh men attending a football game in Arizona to see how people would treat them. They set them up with hidden microphones and cameras, etc.
They want to do the same thing 2 or 3 other times (in various parts of the USA) with one or two Muslim men in each setting. They are looking for men who actually "look Muslim". They want a guy with no foreign accent whatsoever, a good thick beard, an outgoing personality, and someone willing to wear a kufi/skullcap during the filming.

That said, I'm urgently looking for someone who can be filmed this April 1st weekend at a Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia. NBC is willing to fly in someone and cover their weekend expenses. The filming would take place all day on Saturday and Sunday.

The inference is that NASCAR fans are bigots, and NBC News was hoping to bait fans into making insensitive remarks to the Muslim / Arab people it had planted at the track.

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communications, said Wednesday that no instances of unrest were reported. "No one bothered them," Poston said.

It's hard to imagine that NBC News would try to entrap fans in a ploy to make its Dateline segment juicier. But apparently the network did just that; NBC did not deny its actions when confronted by NASCAR.

In a statement released by NBC, it noted that more "plants" are in the works: "It's very early on in our newsgathering process, but be assured we will be visiting a number of locations across the country and are confident that our reporting team is pursuing this story in a fair manner."

Mind-boggling, that's the only way I know to describe that mentality.

"NASCAR thinks it's absolutely outrageous that you have a news organization trying to make the news instead of reporting the news," Poston said.

While NBC News is at it, why not send a few Kluxers into the infield at Talladega? Talk about being short-sheeted by the end of the night.

NBC News should know that NASCAR isn't the last bastion of redneck; the people at NBC Sports thought so much of NASCAR -- and its diverse fan base -- that it chipped in with TNT to spend $1.2 billion for broadcast rights the past six years.

Mike Smith, director of public relations for Martinsville Speedway, said that the Dateline crew's presence wasn't as stealth as it possibly hoped.

"Our security knew almost immediately that [the Dateline crew] were on site and they were monitored the whole time they were here, for obvious reasons -- their protections, fans protection -- and they were not disturbed," Smith said. "It says a lot about our fans.

"If there is an upside, it shows that the image so many people have of NASCAR fans is a false one, and it shows that not only at Martinsville Speedway, but at NASCAR tracks in general, it shows what type of security we have in place that can discover something like this, observe it and make sure nothing happens.

"We've gotten calls [Thursday] from fans praising our security and wanting the number for Dateline," Smith said. "As disappointed as we are, we feel pretty good about the end result."

Take a bow, NASCAR Nation.