By Jeffrey Meyer | October 25, 2015 | 12:09 PM EDT

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd hit House Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy over his questioning of Hillary Clinton last week, specifically over the subject of Sidney Blumenthal.The NBC News Political Director asked Gowdy “[y]ou had made a promise that you were keeping the focus on Benghazi. Do you feel as if you did as much or -- even some Republicans were wondering why you were going down the Sidney Blumenthal -- what some called a rabbit hole.” 

By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 11:13 PM EDT

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.

By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 8:47 PM EDT

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. 

By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 5:54 PM EDT

Reacting to the first round of questioning in Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, CNN hosts and panelists couldn’t help but trip over themselves in gushing over how Hillary Clinton was “very confidence” in “keeping her cool” while answering “utterly baffling” questions about confidante Sidney Blumenthal that the American people supposedly do not “really care about” and see as “a waste.”

By Curtis Houck | October 12, 2015 | 9:09 PM EDT

On Monday, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News prominently touted the claims by a fired staffer on the House Select Committee on Benghazi that the panel’s sole aim is to takedown former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a move that gives her “a potential lifeline” in “another blow” to the committee.

By Tom Johnson | June 18, 2015 | 10:58 AM EDT

In a Wednesday column, Tomasky alleged that the “real job” of the House select committee looking into the September 2012 Benghazi attack is “to get [Hillary] Clinton” and declared that “this ‘investigation’ now constitutes openly and defiantly urinating on the grave of Amb. [Chris] Stevens.” Tomasky commented that Trey “Gowdy’s investigators have come up empty on the consular attack itself, but their assignment, undoubtedly never spoken but equally undoubtedly always understood, is to find something that will keep Clinton out of the White House.”

By Curtis Houck | June 17, 2015 | 12:53 AM EDT

After ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today ignored on Tuesday that longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal was set to testify hours later before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, their evening news counterparts joined with the CBS Evening News to also duck this story. The omission of Blumenthal’s testimony by the CBS Evening News follows CBS This Morning’s scant 20 seconds of coverage on the issue. 

By Matthew Balan | May 20, 2015 | 6:36 PM EDT

CNN's Gloria Borger asserted on Wednesday's Wolf program that the latest revelation involving a potential conflict of interest for Hillary Clinton – her e-mail exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal on Libya when she was secretary of state – wasn't much of a scandal: "I don't think this rises to a huge level, but it does show you that when you've been in public life for decades, you do collect a lot of people...who still want to get your ear." This came moments after Borger acknowledged that this issue was "kind of embarrassing."

By Curtis Houck | March 31, 2015 | 9:01 PM EDT

On Tuesday night, ABC and CBS declined to cover the latest in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal as the House Select Committee on Benghazi requested a private meeting with the former Secretary of State while a separate deadline concerning her e-mail server approaches. Days after the committee requested Clinton turn her private e-mail server over to an independent party for review, the panel looking into the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Libya wants Clinton to sit for a private interview in addition to a public hearing by May 1 at the latest.

By Curtis Houck | September 17, 2014 | 10:56 PM EDT

The major broadcast networks on Wednesday refused to cover the first hearing held by the House Select Committee on Benghazi to begin assessing what happened in the 2012 attack that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty dead.

Between their morning and evening newscasts, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC neglected to offer any stories on the bipartisan hearing chaired by Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who promised that: “[O]ur fellow citizens deserve all of the facts of what happened before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi and they deserve an investigative process worthy of the memory of those who died and worthy of the trust of our fellow citizens.”

By Matthew Balan | September 17, 2014 | 5:42 PM EDT

CNN and MSNBC viewers on Wednesday would have to switch channels if they wanted to watch the first hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. CNN aired a 15-second news brief at the top of the 10 am Eastern hour, mere minutes before the nearly three-hour meeting began, but didn't cover the proceedings live. MSNBC set aside 12 minutes worth of segments to the event, and sometimes showed split-screen video, but didn't provide the audio. By contrast, Fox News Channel provided nearly 41 minutes (40 minutes, 51 seconds) of live coverage of the congressional committee's hearing during the 10 am and 11 am Eastern hours.

By Clay Waters | August 29, 2014 | 9:03 AM EDT

The New York Times invariably casts any GOP inquiry into the intelligence failures that led to the death of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, as a purely partisan venture. The pattern was noted last year by the paper's own Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, who wrote before hearings in May 2013, "The Times has had a tendency to both play down the subject, which has significant news value, and to pursue it most aggressively as a story about political divisiveness rather than one about national security mistakes and the lack of government transparency. Many readers would like to see more on that front, and so would I."

But the Times is still at it. Friday's story by Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer reduced a deliberative investigative effort by GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy to a politically motivated ploy to damage former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential run in 2016: "Democrats Wary of Benghazi Inquiry Stretching Into ’16 Election Season." They also reveal that Benghazi is an outrage only for "the Republican Party's most conservative voters."