The network media’s blackout of the IRS scandal continued on Wednesday night with zero mentions of the Senate hearing held hours before as well as a threat issued by a federal judge to hold IRS commissioner John Koskinen and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys in contempt of court concerning Lois Lerner’s e-mails. As usual, FNC's Special Report provided coverage that the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC and Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision did not and led its Wednesday show with a full story from chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel.
IRS scandal
By Curtis Houck | June 26, 2015 | 1:04 AM EDT
On Thursday night, the major broadcast networks ignored a new development in the IRS scandal that the agency erased 422 backup tapes and in turn destroyed 24,000 e-mails of embattled former official Lois Lerner. With ABC, CBS, and NBC on the sidelines, the Fox News Channel’s Special Report offered a full report on Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing concerning the multi-year scandal. Bret Baier informed viewers that there was “new information about thousands more e-mails in the IRS targeting scandal destroyed during the investigation.”
By Curtis Houck | April 30, 2015 | 12:09 AM EDT
In the Wednesday edition of bias by omission, five of the English and Spanish network evening newscasts again refused to report on a troubling sign for the U.S. economy while all six omitted any mention of a new development in the IRS scandal. After completely ignoring the story all together Wednesday morning, the CBS Evening News stepped up to mention that the U.S. economy has screeched to a grinding halt with a measly 0.2 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2015.
By Connor Williams | June 27, 2014 | 12:35 PM EDT
On the June 27 edition of CNN Newsroom, a panel discussed new calls from Ted Cruz that the IRS scandal needs a special prosecutor. John Avlon of The Daily Beast wasn’t buying it, trashing the Texas senator for leading a supposed witch hunt. He also argued that the root of the problem was the Citizens United ruling, and that the real solution is more campaign finance reform.
When host Carol Costello questioned Avlon about the necessity of a special prosecutor, he rushed to dismiss the issue: “I think probably a special prosecutor is at this moment not necessary as is calling for the impeachment of the Attorney General of the United States...Whenever Ted Cruz or Darrell Issa walks into the matter it immediately turns into a partisan hackathon as opposed to a search for the truth.” Thankfully, Will Cain of The Blaze was there to counter Avlon, and offered quite the opposite perspective [MP3 audio here; video below]:
By Connor Williams | June 18, 2014 | 4:55 PM EDT
As we’ve noted here at NewsBusters, the liberal media have remained virtually silent on new reports of years and years of emails being lost from Lois Lerner and other IRS employees. So it was refreshing that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough spent some time on his June 18 Morning Joe program to briefly discuss the new developments.
Reactions to the news from USA Today that there were “seven hard drive crashes, no centralized archive, and a regular practice of reusing and erasing backup tapes every six months” were met with mockery from many on the panel. Unsurprisingly, the moderately-conservative host and former GOP congressman Scarborough was most appalled [MP3 audio here; video below]:
By Amy Ridenour | March 18, 2014 | 7:24 PM EDT
With the help of research materials from Newsbusters and the Media Research Center, the National Center for Public Policy Research (disclosure: my employer) today challenged Disney chief Robert Iger over media bias at ABC News at Disney's annual shareholder meeting.
National Center Free Enterprise Project Director Justin Danhof asked Iger why, as revealed by the MRC, ABC News devoted only 128 seconds to coverage of the IRS scandal from July 2013-January 2014, even though 53 percent of Americans believe the IRS broke the law and even Democrats, by a 2-1 margin, believe a special prosecutor should be appointed.
(audio after break)