Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Fish With Martyr Sauce

CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has apparently had enough of the network not running her Benghazigate pieces and is, I assume, leaving for someplace where she can happily smear the President more often over in Winger Welfare land.

Sources at CBS told the Washington Post's Erik Wemple that Atkisson was upset that the network hadn't used more of her reporting on the Sept, 11 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and she's currently working on a book that details her struggles with the Obama administration (title: "Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington").

But Atkisson had long ago carved out a special place in the hearts of conservatives.

Not only did she earn a reputation for relentlessly hounding the Obama administration over Benghazi, she also doggedly reported on the federal government's gun-walking operation known as "Fast and Furious," another conservative obsession.

The right showed its appreciation for her "Fast and Furious" coverage in 2012, when Atkisson received the Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Her reporting was also regularly picked up by the aforementioned conservative news sites. Peruse through the archives at Breitbart, The Blaze and Townhall, and you'll find Atkisson's work cited frequently.
Of course, maybe it was because Attkisson is basically working for the GOP and helping to launder leaks to damage the Obama administration as recently as November.

On November 11, a CBS News report cited selectively leaked partial transcripts from Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponent Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to claim that "the project manager in charge of building the federal health care website was apparently kept in the dark about serious failures in the website's security." The network was criticized by Maddow producer Steve Benen when he found that the warnings referenced a function of the health care website that won't be active until early 2014 and has nothing to do with the parts of the website that are currently in use. A Democratic staffer Benen talked to also said that this part of the website "will not submit or share personally identifiable information."

CBS' faulty report aired just days after the network faced widespread criticism and was forced to apologize for failing properly vet an unreliable source that was prominently featured in the network's October 27 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi attack. But CBS wasn't the only outlet to promote misleading claims from the leaked Oversight Committee transcript.

On November 11, The New York Times reported that The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Henry Chao, "[t]he chief digital architect for the federal health insurance marketplace," was "not aware of tests that indicated potential security flaws in the system, which opened to the public on Oct. 1," citing excerpts released by Issa. The same day, FoxNews.com claimed that Obamacare security concerns had been "withheld," but never mentioned that its story was based on a partial transcript. CNN's New Day, and Fox News' America's Newsroom and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren all ran the story on November 12. The Associated Press repeated the claim "Chao was unaware of a memo earlier that month detailing unresolved security issues" as late as November 13 -- after contradictory reports had surfaced.

The media's failure to confirm the suggestions made by partial transcripts from the House Oversight Committee is a significant oversight, considering the committee chairman Darrell Issa's history of releasing misleading material the press.

So yes, she gladly wants to run false and misleading pieces to hurt Democrats, and is upset that maybe, in the wake of Lara Logan's 60 Minutes Benghazi fiasco that had to be publicly retracted, that the network is actually being more critical of GOP propaganda pieces.

That's enough to make you a "victim of liberal bias" when you quit your job.


No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails