Thursday, January 16, 2014

EVERYBODY IS GUILTY OF LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS, EVEN PEOPLE WHO AREN'T IN THE MEDIA

Kyle Drennen of NewsBusters is upset:
Network Coverage of 'Scathing' Benghazi Report Doesn't Mention Obama's Name Once

While NBC, ABC, and CBS all covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report blaming the Obama administration for security failures leading up to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, none of the coverage on Wednesday's evening newscasts or Thursday's morning shows mentioned President Obama by name....

The networks were happy to name plenty of people and agencies blamed for the failures -- even including one of the victims of the attack, Ambassador Stevens. However, they were unwilling to acknowledge that all those players were part of the Obama administration.
(Emphasis in original.)

Drennen does say that the State Department was blamed in some of the stories -- a department that, last time I looked, was constitutionally headed by a Cabinet officer who reports to the president. But that's not good enough. The news reports don't mention Obama by name.

Um, you know what else doesn't mention Obama by name? The Senate Intelligence Committee report itself. Go ahead, search the PDF.

To be precise, Obama's name doesn't appear once in the 58-page main report of the full committee. Obama's name does appear a whopping three times in the 85-page document -- each time in one of the appended statements by members of the committee's Republican minority. Once, his administration is accused of not providing enough access to documents and witnesses. Once, we're told that he'd better not keep trying to close Guantanamo. And once, there's a reference to "the unfulfilled promises of President Obama that he would bring the terrorists to justice." Otherwise, his name is absent from the report. (Note that not even these Republican statements blame Obama by name for the handling of the attack.)

So I guess the media was engaged in liberal bias in covering a report that itself was guilty of liberal bias. Have I got that right?

3 comments:

Danp said...

Apparently, Drennen is afraid a lot of Republican viewers will think Benghazi happened during the Bush Administration. Kinda like most think 9/11 was a Clinton disaster.

Victor said...

Danp,
What, that Bush administration from long, long, ago?

That ended when he lost to Bill Clinton.
And everyone who's Conservative knows that Clinton, BJ impeachment and all, was President during 9/11 - all the way up to Hurricane Katrina, when President ObaMau-Mau took over, and that he was responsible for the debt and economic collapse. AND BENGHAZI!!!

And the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and occupations you might ask?

What wars and occupations?

They haven't been in the news in years, so who remembers?

And after there were no warm welcomes, no flowers, and chocolates, no one cares, either.

Steve M. said...

New rule: comments addressed to banned commenters will be deleted.