Those folks at the Associated Press sure are "clever."
Those looking for information about Hillary Clinton's damning email to her daughter Chelsea indicating that Mrs. Clinton knew that a planned operation by Al Qaeda — and not an Internet video — was behind the Benghazi attacks which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others trying to save him will find nothing at all at the AP's national site in a search (not in quotes) on "Hillary Chelsea":
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin trashed Republican Congressman Jim Jordan (Ohio) during Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 for being “the worst” in his questioning of Hillary Clinton and acting “unprofessional,” “misleading,” and “demeaning.” Reacting to Jordan speaking with CNN’s Dana Bash moments beforehand, Toobin began his diatribe by whining that the conservative member of Congress “was clearly the worst, the most unprofessional, the most misleading, the most really demeaning to the Congress in terms of his questioning.”
Suddenly worried about government spending, the Thursday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured anchor David Muir complaining on three separate occasions about the cost of the House Select Committee on Benghazi while chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl observed that Republicans “really didn’t succeed” in “draw[ing] blood” from Hillary Clinton.
Offering no surprises, Thursday’s NBC Nightly News aired glowing remarks for Hillary Clinton’s performance during the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing with conclusions that she “stood her ground” as it “dissolved into bickering” while she “stayed above the fray” and removing Benghazi from being an issue in the 2016 campaign.
Hours after Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards testified Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee concerning the videos that have embroiled the abortion provider in scandal over the selling of aborted baby parts, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC rushed to the defense of the “unfazed” and “spirited” Richards as she “endured a five-hour interrogation” by the GOP.
CNN State of the Union substitute host Dana Bash certainly lived up to her last name when it came to grilling Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) over the Department of Homeland Security funding and asking if the “conservative wing” of the Republican Party was too centered on principle and “chaos” instead of the “reality” of governance.
Bash started the interview off by insinuating that everyone is disgusted. “I want to ask the first question that everybody out there is probably asking, probably in disgust, saying, really? what is wrong with Congress? Why can’t you govern? And why can’t you fund a government agency that keeps us safe?”
After a month in which NBC Nightly News gave more prominence to ugly Christmas sweaters, grape salad, Al Roker's 34-hour weather report, and a live broadcast of Peter Pan starring Brian Williams' daughter, Allison, the broadcast finally discovered Jonathan Gruber.
On Tuesday evening, NBC’s evening newscast acknowledged the name Jonathan Gruber for the first time and his insulting comments regarding ObamaCare a full 32 days after the group American Commitment unearthed the first Gruber video on November 7.
The major broadcast networks continued their month-long plus streak of not covering the IRS scandal on Friday night and Saturday morning as ABC, CBS, and NBC all omitted from their evening and morning newscasts two major developments. The new details on the scandal involving the agency that targeted conservative groups include the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informing congressional staffers that a possible 760 IRS computer servers exist that could contain lost e-mails from Lois Lerner.
After Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday inquiring the whereabouts of a former Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney and one-time Lois Lerner employee and Judicial Watch released new IRS emails on Thursday revealing a “secret research project” on donors to non-profit political groups, two additional IRS bombshell broke on Friday. Upon these stories breaking today, the question is: Will the major broadcast networks cover these stories?
On Monday Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the Oversight Committee investigating the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party, made a stunning claim that the FBI was stonewalling his investigation.
Last week, Issa was so frustrated with William Wilkins' testimony, in which he used the phrase “I don’t recall” 80 times, he accused the IRS chief counsel of “either a deliberate attempt to obfuscate” or “gross incompetence.” Number of Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) stories on these stunning allegations? Zero.
On Thursday afternoon, FBI director Robert Mueller was called before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the bureau's association with the recent scandals that have rocked the president's second term. He testified about the FBI investigation into the IRS targeting scandal as well as about the security at Benghazi and their delay in responding to the attack. Mueller stumbled through the interview, as he did not give many straight or definitive answers. In fact, he seemed to be remarkably uninformed about key elements regarding the scandals given the fact that he was supposed to be in charge of the entire operation.
Curiously, with such a significant development in these scandals, particularly the one pertaining to the IRS targeting, all of the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts neglected the story. NBC Nightly News along with CBS Evening News and ABC World News did not deem this progression in the scandal newsworthy as it was given collective total of no air time. The only network that gave this new development any time at all was the Fox News Channel. In fact one of the channel’s staple primetime shows, Hannity, featured the story as its leading piece and had a number of guests on the show to comment about the scandal and its lack of media coverage, including the founder of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell.
Not that it absolves them from blame, but one contributor to the Big Three establishment TV networks' utter failure to report on or keep up with developments in the IRS targeting scandal -- failures which have been noted by Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters, as well as by the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell on Sean Hannity's TV show last night -- is the Associated Press.
The AP provides much of the raw material for the networks' stories and largely determines the nets' perception as to which stories are important. It is still quite appropriate to refer to it as the Administration's Press, even after Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to scouring phone records involving 20 business and personal lines used by over 100 AP reporters and editors in April and May of last year. Yesterday's failure by the wire service's Pete Yost to even mention that the IRS scandal was on the agenda at a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday involving FBI Director Robert Mueller exemplifies how negligent or intimidated (or both) the AP has become.