For the NBC report, the first Chinese balloon wasn’t a non-event blown out of proportion, but something that “shined a light” on the “strategic importance” of Alaskan military bases “as adversaries like Russia and China demonstrate new capabilities.” NBC didn’t bother including the Pentagon’s admissions that the balloon was not an intelligence threat, or the likelihood that it drifted into U.S. airspace by accident. Instead, it allowed the earlier pervasive assumption that the balloon represented some kind of crisis to justify the rest of the coverage.

[…]

The message of NBC’s reporting was clear: Russia and China are coming, and we need a robust military to defend ourselves from these threats. The balloon was just a practice run for more threats from Russia and China. The images on screen did the job of reinforcing this message, despite the fact that there was no logical argument about any danger presented to the audience.

(Emphasis original.)