NBC Doc May Face Trouble After Princeton Ebola Scare

NBC’s chief medical editor may not get to keep her job after creating a panic in Princeton when she broke her 21-day Ebola quarantine.

AP reports on Dr. Nancy Snyderman’s plight:

Snyderman, a surgeon who spent 17 years as a medical correspondent for ABC News and has been at NBC since 2006, covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and worked briefly with Ashoka Mukpo, the cameraman who caught the virus and is now being treated in Nebraska. Upon returning to the United States, Snyderman and her crew voluntarily agreed to quarantine themselves for 21 days, the longest known incubation period for the disease. They have shown no symptoms.

Yet New Jersey health officials ruled that her quarantine should be mandatory after Snyderman and her crew were spotted getting takeout food from a New Jersey restaurant.

More than 1,100 people have subsequently written on Snyderman’s Facebook page, many expressing anger. There were suggestions she should be fired or lose her medical license, and some viewers said they wouldn’t trust her again. Snyderman’s failure to be more specific about the lapse or take greater responsibility was another flashpoint.

One expert’s suggestion to Snyderman: Tell the full truth. “If she and the network are more forthcoming about the whole matter, I believe that her credibility can be preserved,” said Bill Wheatley, a former NBC exec who now teaches at Columbia University