The Benghazi Media Maze

By Robert Knight

You just knew press coverage of the congressional hearing on the Benghazi cover-ups last Wednesday would be nonexistent or squirrely, right?

It was mostly the latter, so break out the nuts.

After the hearing, an ABC radio segment utterly ignored the content. Three State Department whistleblowers had exposed alarming contradictions in the official White House account, but ABC News led with a clip of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who said the hearing was politically motivated, followed by a GOP spokesman who said it wasn’t. That was it.

Pay no attention; there’s nothing to see here, folks.

On NBC, veteran newsman David Gregory breezily blamed the intelligence community for the Obama Administration’s initial claims that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate were a spontaneous uprising against an anti-Muslim video. U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, who on five Sunday talk show appearances on Sept. 16 falsely blamed the video, was a “peripheral player,” said Mr. Gregory.

Then, perhaps realizing he was being too obvious in carrying water for the Obama team, he finished with, “there was at least sloppiness with regard to why they were describing this in the way that they were when it very quickly became apparent that this was a terror attack.”

The White House knew through real-time communiqués that the attack had nothing to do with the video. Yet, days later, Ms. Rice, along with Hillary Clinton, continued to blame the video. This is “sloppiness?” A shorter word comes to mind. A couple of them, in fact. 

Read more. Posted on Tea Party Unity on May 14, 2013