In-the-tank Media Gave 'Pathetic' Benghazi Coverage 2 Aid Obama
(IBD) October Suppress: In-the-tank Media Gave 'Pathetic' Benghazi Coverage 2 Aid Obama
investors business daily
on November 6, 2012 at 4:30pm
Bias: Call it the "October Suppress" as the so-called "mainstream" media provided less coverage to the current president's bungling of and lying about Benghazi than they did to another president's decades-old DUI arrest.
Last Friday, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Kirsten Powers, a Daily Beast columnist, appeared on Fox News' "Happening Now" program to justifiably bash the mainstream media and its orchestrated suppression of coverage of the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
Neither is a charter member of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but both roundly condemned the shameful and politically motivated actions of their colleagues. Miller called them "co-conspirators" in a Benghazi cover-up, and Powers said the "mainstream media is pathetic" and "carrying water for the administration."
They are right and just one example is what happened on all the Sunday talk shows on Oct. 28. When the Benghazi attack was brought up by a guest, the moderator quickly changed the subject.
When Newt Gingrich raised Benghazi on ABC's "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos quickly moved on to another topic. Also running interference for Team Obama was NBC's David Gregory who cut off GOP panelist Carly Fiorina while promising to "get to that a little later," which he never did.
On CNN's "State of the Union," Candy Crowley, who aided President Obama in the second presidential debate by wrongly telling Mitt Romney that Obama called Benghazi a terrorist attack from day one, sloughed off attempts by two GOP officials to bring up Benghazi.
Folks like ABC's Rick Klein explain away the Benghazi non-coverage by saying it's because GOP nominee Mitt Romney did not make much of an issue of it, particularly during the presidential debates. If he had spoken out about it, he would have covered it.
Yet witness what happened in the town hall debate when Romney did bring it up. Crowley took Obama's side and argued with Romney as the president looked on approvingly. When Romney condemned our Egyptian embassy's apology for the video the administration used as an excuse for weeks after the attack, he was condemned for politicizing the issue, the media spending more time on his comments than the terrorist attack.
NBC's Brian Williams opened his Sept. 12 Nightly News with: "Romney is taking fire tonight for the way he went on the attack" over Benghazi. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley noted "Democrats said the governor had injected politics into a tragedy."
That first night, a Media Research Center analysis found the Romney angle received nearly 10 minutes of coverage on the Big Three evening newscasts (9 minutes, 28 seconds) vs. just 25 seconds questioning Obama's Mideast policy.
From there it was downhill, as the networks ignored revelations that the Obama administration didn't heed prior warnings, denied requests for added security and knew the al-Qaida-linked group Ansar al-Sharia was responsible for the attack they watched as it happened.
What the media consider news important enough to judge a presidential candidate on has apparently changed over time. In 2000, a Democratic operative orchestrated an "October surprise" attack on George W. Bush, revealing that 24 years earlier Bush had been arrested for drunken driving. That spawned a media feeding frenzy that nearly cost Bush his election bid.
In 2004, CBS icon Dan Rather thought forged documents proved former F-102 fighter pilot Bush had used his father's influence to avoid service in Vietnam. Even after it was revealed the documents were fraudulent and that Bush the younger had in fact volunteered for Vietnam service, Rather still insisted the story was true.
But the murder of four Americans in a terrorist attack, including the first ambassador in three decades, was ignored because it might have hurt their candidate, President Obama, who falsely claimed the war on terror was over and terrorism was as dead as Osama bin Laden.
Kirsten Powers And Judith Miller Call Coverage Of Benghazi Pathetic - Investors.com
