Washington is buzzing about the expose this morning by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl showing that the White House’s Benghazi talking points underwent 12 different revisions and were scrubbed of references to terrorism. The report builds on and confirms the reporting by The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes. Last week, Hayes reported on how the talking points were changed to obscure the truth surrounding the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
As the scandal keeps growing, one news outlet is determined to sweep it under the rug. Just as ABC’s report this morning made the widened the Benghazi scandal, today’s New York Times editorial prematurely pooh-poohs anyone determined to hold the Obama adminstration accountable:
It goes on in that vein. But that’s not all that the Times editorial page has gotten wrong today. The other big news is the Obama administration’s Friday news dump that the IRS admitted that it unfairly targeted Tea Party and conservative groups for audits and offered a public apology. In case you were wondering what the Times editorial page thinks about all this, you might take a gander at their editorial from March 7, 2012, headlined “The IRS Does Its Job“:
Tea Party supporters claim they are being politically harassed with extensive I.R.S. questionnaires. But the service properly contends that it must ensure that these groups are “primarily” engaged in social welfare, not political campaigning, to merit tax exemption under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.
A serious news organization would have seen the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS harassment of Tea Party groups as prime opportunities to do reporting to get to the truth of these matters. The editors at the New York Times, however, seem to wish stories with inconvenient political narratives simply go away. And if they don’t, the editorial page gets to scold anyone who disagrees.
