For viewers of the “big three” networks on Monday and Tuesday, coverage of the latest Hillary Clinton e-mail dump was all but non-existent as ABC has censored it from both their morning and evening newscasts while CBS and NBC have only given abbreviated nods in their morning shows. All told, the three news cycles combined for a measly one-minute-and-45-seconds of airtime with one minute and 24 seconds coming from a segment on the Clinton campaign on Tuesday’s Today.
State Department
Thanks to some fabulous work by American Commitment’s Phil Kerpen digging through on Tuesday e-mails from Clinton State Department staffer Philippe Reines, he found that suspended CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott had communicated with Reines on multiple occasions to the point of taking marching orders over what she tweeted.
On Friday evening, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored the latest dump of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from the State Department that included the retroactive classification of 268 e-mails that now makes for one out of every 16 e-mails that have been “released” to the public since her private e-mail server scandal was unearthed in March.
Analyzing Hillary Clinton’s performance before the House Benghazi Committee, CBS News political director John Dickerson stated on Thursday’s CBS Evening News that Clinton “avoid[ed]” falling into any “pitfalls” as those questioning her fought “like cats and dogs.”
Finally getting his chance to interview Hillary Clinton on Friday’s The Lead, CNN anchor Jake Tapper didn’t exactly measure up as while he did what other reporters failed to do in asking Clinton about her relationship with Sidney Blumenthal, he cozied up to her on the recent marking of her and Bill’s 40th wedding anniversary plus sarcastically asking he could “get your e-mail address.”
While the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all prominently touted on Monday President Obama’s defense of Hillary Clinton on her e-mail scandal in a 60 Minutes interview, none of the three dared to report later in the week how the Obama administration largely walked it back by declaring that Obama believes Clinton’s private e-mail server “does not pose a threat to national security” “based on what has been made public” so far.
Just hours ahead of Tuesday’s 2016 Democratic presidential debate on CNN, the network was already in spin mode for Hillary Clinton down to the most minute detail as senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny marveled during The Situation Room at the sight of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin surveying the stage for Clinton to gather “a sense of what this evening is going to be.”
On Wednesday night, the CBS Evening News punted on the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s State Department e-mails released hours earlier while their competitors at ABC and NBC did cover them, but only through the veil of defending Clinton against Speaker of the House candidate Kevin McCarthy’s comments on the Benghazi Committee that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell touted as “an unlikely political lifeline.”
In the rarely fruitless world of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews groaned at the top of Monday’s show about the ongoing Benghazi and e-mail scandals enveloping Hillary Clinton that have become “termite bites” for the Democratic presidential candidate as Vice President Joe Biden could still join the 2016 race.
On Monday evening, the major broadcast networks showed no interest in covering the revelation from the State Department that a safe installed at the office of Hillary Clinton’s attorney was insufficient to protect the classified material contained in e-mails from her private e-mail server in yet another development ahead of the latest e-mail batch’s release on Wednesday.
After part one of Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd’s interview with Hillary Clinton aired on Sunday’s show, parts two and three premiered on the debut edition of MSNBC’s MTP Daily and while the discussion on foreign policy included time on Libya, Todd neglected to even mention in his questioning the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi that has embroiled Clinton in scandal.
On Wednesday evening, ABC and CBS moved on from the latest break in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal as it was revealed that the FBI has been able to recover an unknown number of previously deleted personal and work e-mails from Clinton’s private e-mail server. The CBS Evening News also completely ignored the 2016 presidential campaign to instead give a full segment to the five-year-old girl from California who met Pope Francis to express concern for her illegal immigrant parents.
