Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who resigned from CBS earlier this year, has a new book out describing her treatment at the hands of biased network executives and outraged Obama administration officials.
Attkisson calls herself politically agnostic, and was once known for tough reporting on unflattering stories about the Bush administration. But when she turned that same scrutiny to the Obama administration, her network started to cool to her ideas.
Attkisson was at the front of reporting on the Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals, but soon found the network killing her stories, claiming that “incremental” developments were a waste of time.
In a lengthy interview with the New York Post, Attkisson said she plays a “Substitution Game” where she imagines how the press would cover a story if it had happened under the Bush administration. When it comes to green energy, she said, “Imagine a parallel scenario which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney personally appeared at groundbreakings for, and used billions of tax dollars to support, multiple giant corporate ventures whose investors were sometimes major campaign bundlers, only to have one (or two, or three) go bankrupt . . . when they knew in advance the companies’ credit ratings were junk.”
“Many in the media,” she said, “are wrestling with their own souls: They know that ObamaCare is in serious trouble, but they’re conflicted about reporting that. Some worry that the news coverage will hurt a cause that they personally believe in. They’re all too eager to dismiss damaging documentary evidence while embracing, sometimes unquestioningly, the Obama administration’s ever-evolving and unproven explanations.”
Attkisson also revealed that multiple Obama officials called her dogged reporting “unreasonable”: “Goddammit, Sharyl!” the White House’s Eric Schultz exclaimed during her investigation of the Fast and Furious scandal. “The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable. You’re the only one who’s not reasonable!”
Attkisson observed bias even in the small details of the newsroom: one of her bosses stipulated that liberal anaylsts be referred to as “analysts,” but conservative analysts always identified as “conservatives” or, if they were particularly irksome, “right-wing.”
Read the full interview here.
