Can CBS Be Trusted to Fairly Report on Hillary?

According to WEEKLY STANDARD sources, the initial focus of 60 Minutes’s Benghazi report was al Qaeda’s role in the attack. While even in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2012 attack, al Qaeda’s role was obvious, the Obama administration played fast and loose with the fact the terror organization was behind the attack. By the time Logan began working on her Benghazi report, CBS News had already engendered a good deal of controversy for its reporting on this matter. Former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson pointed the finger at her former network for helping the Obama administration obfuscate on this point; the day after Benghazi attack, in an interview with 60 Minutes’s Steve Kroft, President Obama said it was “too early to know” whether the attack was terrorism. As the election neared, whether or not Obama had called the attack terrorism emerged as a major election issue with Republican candidate Mitt Romney attacking Obama for failing to label Benghazi a terror attack for 14 days, and the issue became a flashpoint during the second presidential debate. Despite the fact the interview would have been especially newsworthy, CBS didn’t show the clip, and only leaked a transcript of Kroft’s interview days before the election. Attkisson further reports that 60 Minutes emailed the transcript of Kroft’s Obama interview to CBS News’s New York headquarters the day it took place. And yet, CBS reporters were later directed to use soundbites suggesting Obama promptly labeled Benghazi a terror attack. Attkisson later confronted CBS News president David Rhodes, the brother of White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, who told her an internal investigation would be done to figure out why CBS sat on such an explosive bit of news. Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple agreed with Attkisson that it was an “awful episode” that did not reflect well on CBS News.