What exactly is Howard Kurtz’s job? At his blog, Kurtz is described as the guy who “virtually created the media-criticism racket,” and every Sunday on CNN he hosts a roundtable of guests who are presumably there to criticize the media,. But you never really see a whole lot of media criticism from Kurtz. At least not the kind of criticism that might make the media uncomfortable.
Granted, it’s not my place to tell someone how to do his job. But shouldn’t the fact that “60 Minutes” withheld video of President Obama contradicting the White House and State Department narrative surrounding the terrorist attack in Libya, be something found on a media critic’s radar?
For weeks after the murder of four Americans in Libya, the Obama Administration increasingly sharpened a false Narrative that put the blame for the attack on a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video. White House spokesman Jay Carney told the White House Press Corps for almost two weeks that there was no evidence of a terror attack. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice did the same on all the Sunday news shows almost a week after the attack. The President himself, on Letterman, “The View,” and elsewhere, did the same.
But we now know, thanks to a few good reporters, that we were repeatedly lied to. And now we also know that the whole time the Obama Administration was spinning this false tale, “60 Minutes” was sitting on video of the President contradicting himself.
On Sept. 12, the day after the attack, President Obama appeared on “60 Minutes,” and said the following:
“You’re right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt, and my suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start.”
“Looking to target Americans,” means that on the day after, Obama suspected — and with good reason — that the attack was premeditated and not a spontaneous protest over a video. In other words, immediately after the attack, Obama wasn’t lying. The lying would only begin after the interview and sharpen over the days and weeks that followed.
At the time of the interview, CBS and “60 Minutes”didn’t broadcast this portion of the interview — which might have made sense then. But for two weeks, as Obama and his Administration ran around the country blatantly contradicting his “60 Minutes'” statement, CBS still didn’t release the video. It would take more than a month, just a little over two weeks before the election, before “60 Minutes” would finally released the President’s contradictory statement. But even then, CBS quietly snuck the video into another news report as though it had always been there and was nothing special.
If you think about it, CBS handled it all quite brilliantly — that is, if you believe as I do, that the network was desperate to aid Obama in his pursuit of reelection.
First off, as the White House Libya narrative unraveled, by not dropping this devastating piece of video into the debate,”60 Minutes” helped to ensure the growing storm surrounding the cover up remained on the sidelines of the mainstream media and in New Media. Had CBS done the right thing and released the video once it became obvious what the White House was up to, talk of the cover up most assuredly would’ve picked up steam in the MSM.
CBS also held on to the video all throughout the controversy surrounding the second presidential debate when Mitt Romney attempted to litigate the Libya issue, only to find himself tag-teamed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, the debate’s shockingly incompetent and biased moderator.
By the time CNN did sneak the video out there on Oct. 24, it was clear that Romney and the MSM had no intention of bringing the Libya issue up again before the election. So it was a perfect time for CBS to release it. History would record it was released before Election Day, the fevered election news would bury the scandal of CBS’s timing of the release, and regardless of who won, no one would care about CBS’s behavior in the flurry of distraction that always comes after an election….
Especially “media critics” like Howard Kurtz.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.