By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton resident Nancy Snyderman said Thursday that she is leaving her job as chief medical editor for NBC News, the end of a nearly 10-year-career with the network marked by her controversial decision to violate a quarantine last year.
In a statement, she said she was planning to join the faculty of a “major U.S. medical school.”
She had worked at NBC since 2006, including covering Ebola-stricken Liberia last year where one of her crew came down with the deadly disease. But she had faced intense criticism over her decision to break a voluntary quarantine to make a food run to The Peasant Grill in Hopewell in October.
The revelation that she had done so sparked outrage and led the state to place her and the rest of her news crew under mandatory quarantine. She later apologized after returning to TV. “Covering the Ebola epidemic last fall in Liberia, and then becoming part of the story upon my return to the U.S., contributed to my decision that now is the time to return to academic medicine,” she said in a statement.
“She’s been a valuable voice both on air and in our newsroom, and we wish her all the best,” an NBC spokesman said in a statement Thursday.
On her Twitter account, she took to defending herself against critics. On Feb.4, she wrote: “To set the record straight: #1 I was not exposed to Ebola #2 It was not soup #3 Vaccinations save lives, wish there were one for Ebola.”
“I was being self monitored and taking temperatures 4-5/day. We were checking in with officials all the time. No exposure at all,” she wrote in another tweet.