A PIX 11 video editor’s al Jazeera ties are raising serious questions about political bias inside New York City’s local media. Joshua Kaitan Lucas, who joined PIX 11 in May 2024, has openly campaigned for Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani despite Nexstar Media Group’s strict ban on political activity for journalists.
Lucas posted a video on Instagram urging voters, “Don’t rank Cuomo,” while tagging Mamdani, and appeared in the candidate’s social media campaign photos. In another post, he declared, “The world can be what we make it.” These actions directly contradict Nexstar’s own code of conduct, which warns employees against compromising “objectivity” or casting “doubt on the Company’s integrity.”
But Lucas’s activism goes beyond city politics. In a YouTube video, he smeared President Donald Trump’s efforts to clean up Washington, D.C., comparing his policies to Nazi Germany. He wrote on Facebook, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, acts like a duck, then it’s a concentration camp,” and accused America under Trump of sliding into totalitarianism.
Lucas’s background only deepens concerns. His LinkedIn profile highlights his past work at Al Jazeera, where he admitted he sought “an embedded perspective of how the organization runs.” Al Jazeera has long been criticized as a propaganda arm of the Qatari government, and Lucas’s embrace of its training raises alarms about the influence of foreign bias in American newsrooms.
As Nexstar itself makes clear, “Nexstar journalists at all levels refrain from political activity.” When their own staffers defy that standard, accountability is not optional—it is necessary.
