A family spokesman for an American who was beheaded in Iraq appeared on CNN, Monday, and slammed the Obama administration's handling of the deaths. Barak Barfi accused the White House of playing a "game of bureaucratic infighting and Jim [Foley] and Steve [Sotloff] are pawns in that game and that's not fair." On Tuesday, ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today showed no interest in the condemnation of the Obama administration.
Steven Sotloff
By Randy Hall | September 3, 2014 | 10:17 PM EDT
The family of Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist beheaded in the past two weeks by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- or ISIS -- is reportedly “outraged” at President Barack Obama and his staff for making “deliberate leaks,” which the relatives interpret as “an attempt to absolve the administration of inaction.”
While this might seem to be the basis of an extensive news article investigating that angle of the conflict between the terrorist group and America, the New York Times reported on it -- in the final three paragraphs of a lengthy article in its Tuesday edition.
By Curtis Houck | September 3, 2014 | 9:49 PM EDT
On Wednesday night’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams completely missed the mark on President Obama’s mixed signals regarding how his administration intends to deal with the threat of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and omitted remarks from Obama that ISIS can be contained to the point of being “a manageable problem.”
At the top of the broadcast, Williams made this blatant falsehood: “[F]or all those who may be wondering if the U.S. is going to rise up, take the bait and get into the fight to root them out, the answer today from both the President and Vice President appeared to be clear and unambiguous.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Matthew Balan | September 3, 2014 | 4:30 PM EDT
On Tuesday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon spotlighted the scoop that President Obama received briefings on ISIS "for at least a year" before the extreme Islamist group's blitzkrieg across northern Iraq – something the Big Three networks failed to do the same evening. During a segment with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Lemon pointed out that the President was "briefed on this a year ago, and then...looked the other way – didn't take it seriously enough."
Kristof did his best to brush this reporting aside: "I don't think it's quite right to say he didn't take it seriously enough. I think that the problem there is that there aren't good options." The CNN anchor also wondered if the liberal politician should take a stronger stance against ISIS, as one of his main counterparts did: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]