Posted October 25, 2014 7:39 PM ET; Last updated October 27, 2014 12:51 AM ET
[From article]
Attkisson was instrumental in breaking the "Fast and Furious" gun-walking scandal and she also uncovered all sorts of official dissembling about Benghazi.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/26/sharryl-attkissons-stonewalled-how-the-m
Sharryl Attkisson's Stonewalled: How the Media Protects Obama
Nick Gillespie
Oct. 26, 2014 9:00 am
Published on May 3, 2014
"If we knew everything then that we know now, one week after it happened, I think that would have been really devastating to [Obama's reelection] campaign," says former CBS reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, referencing the 2012 Benghazi terrorists attacks. Recently revealed White House emails suggest that the Obama administration may have attempted to mislead the American public by placing the blame on an Internet video and not Islamic terrorists, which would have raised questions about Obama's foreign policy strategy.Attkisson, an award winning investigative reporter, was one of the few journalists who continued pursuing the Benghazi story long after many in the main stream media lost interest. According to Attkisson, her bosses at CBS wanted her to drop the story. As a result, she left CBS, her employer for two decades, this past March over what she claims is "liberal bias" at the network and a lack of serious devotion to investigative reporting.
She goes on to say that many in her field are frustrated by the decline of hard-hitting investigative reporting endemic at all networks and not just CBS. The congealing of corporate, news, and political interests at networks have made investigative journalism a relic of the past.
"As one whistleblower put it to me: things have never been worse for people who try to speak the truth inside the government about illegalities and wrong doing. In their view, and I tend to agree, every administration is more clamped down and closed than the one before it. And the next one starts at the finishing point. It's very hard to make it go backwards. There are rules being implemented now against journalists and the type of work that we do that I think will be very hard to unwind."
Attkisson sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie to discuss her reporting on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and the decline of investigative journalism in America.
About 20 minutes.
Camera by Todd Krainin and Joshua Swain. Edited by Amanda Winkler.
* * *
[From article]
Sharyl Attkisson is an unreasonable woman. Important people have told her so.
When the longtime CBS reporter asked for details about reinforcements sent to the Benghazi compound during the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack, White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor replied, “I give up, Sharyl . . . I’ll work with more reasonable folks that follow up, I guess.”
Another White House flack, Eric Schultz, didn’t like being pressed for answers about the Fast and Furious scandal in which American agents directed guns into the arms of Mexican drug lords. “Goddammit, Sharyl!” he screamed at her. “The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable. You’re the only one who’s not reasonable!”
[. . .]
In nearly 20 years at CBS News, she has done many stories attacking Republicans and corporate America, and she points out that TV news, being reluctant to offend its advertisers, has become more and more skittish about, for instance, stories questioning pharmaceutical companies or car manufacturers.
Working on a piece that raised questions about the American Red Cross disaster response, she says a boss told her, “We must do nothing to upset our corporate partners . . . until the stock splits.” (Parent company Viacom and CBS split in 2006).
[. . .]
When the White House didn’t like her reporting, it would make clear where the real power lay. A flack would send a blistering e-mail to her boss, David Rhodes, CBS News’ president — and Rhodes’s brother Ben, a top national security advisor to President Obama.
The administration, with the full cooperation of the media, has successfully turned “Benghazi” into a word associated with nutters, like “Roswell” or “grassy knoll,” but Attkisson notes that “the truth is that most of the damaging information came from Obama administration insiders. From government documents. From sources who were outraged by their own government’s behavior and what they viewed as a coverup.”
[. . .]
One angry CBS exec called to tell Attkisson that Ingraham is “extremely, extremely far right” and that Attkisson shouldn’t appear on her show anymore. Attkisson was puzzled, noting that CBS reporters aren’t barred from appearing on lefty MSNBC shows.
[. . .]
In the book she cites the complete loss of interest in investigative stories at “CBS Evening News” under new host Scott Pelley and new executive producer Shevlin.
[. . .]
“If I offered a story on pretty much any legitimate controversy involving government, instead of being considered a good journalistic watchdog, I was anti-Obama.”
[. . .]
After reading the book, you won’t question whether CBS News or Attkisson is more trustworthy.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/25/former-cbs-reporter-explains-how-the-liberal-media-protects-obama/
Ex-CBS reporter reveals how the liberal media protects Obama
By Kyle Smith
New York Post
October 25, 2014 | 5:12pm
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