How Quaint Alert: CBS News President and WH Official Tied to Benghazi Scandal Are Brothers

By Clash Daily / 11 May 2013 / 41 Comments

One of the mainstream media journalists whose pursuit of the truth has been truly tenacious and nonpartisan is CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson. Her tough reporting has made life difficult for everyone from Hillary Clinton to the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans. She’s also been relentless on the Obama administration’s Fast & Furious gun-running scandal — and, of course, Benghazi. As we mentioned this week, Attkisson’s tough investigative journalism is starting to bother unnamed CBS News executives. Here’s Politico’s scoop, in case you missed it:

But from where Attkisson is sitting, there are actually two Goliaths, one of which is almost entirely absent from the Post profile. The second Goliath is CBS News, which has grown increasingly frustrated with Attkisson’s Benghazi campaign. CBS News executives see Attkisson wading dangerously close to advocacy on the issue, network sources have told POLITICO. Attkisson can’t get some of her stories on the air, and is thus left feeling marginalized and underutilized. That, in part, is why Attkisson is in talks to leave CBS ahead of contract, as POLITICO reported in April. Farhi mentions “internal conflicts” in the final paragraph, though he seems to dismiss them. The “internal conflicts” are indeed real — Attkisson is still eyeing an exit, according to sources — and provide important context for today’s piece.

My analysis of this report was highly critical of CBS News. The network appears to be penalizing one of its best correspondents because she’s doing her job too aggressively. Conservatives quickly imputed a political motive to CBS News’ internal drama, but the Daily Caller has uncovered a connection that suggests there’s a striking personal angle to this controversy, as well:

The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration’s scandals too aggressively. CBS News executives have reportedly expressed frustration with their own reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, who has steadily covered the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya since late last year…On Friday, ABC News reported that the Benghazi talking points went through 12 revisions before they were used on the public. The White House was intimately involved in that process, ABC reported, and the talking points were scrubbed free of their original references to a terror attack. That reporting revealed that President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS News president David Rhodes — was instrumental in changing the talking points in September 2012. ABC’s reporting revealed that Ben Rhodes, who has a masters in fiction from NYU, called a meeting to discuss the talking points at the White House on September 15, 2012.

Sunday, May 12, 2013