Sharyl Attkisson, former CBS reporter, speaks with the network’s Philadelphia affiliate:
Responding to comments regarding a Phoenix television reporter yesterday who initially claimed that the White House pre-screens questions from reporters, Attkisson said, “I wouldn’t surprised if sometimes there is that level of cooperation with some questions. If I need something answered from the White House and they won’t tell me, I’ll call our White House Correspondent. They’re friendlier with the White House Correspondents in general. So the White House Correspondent may ask Jay Carney or one of his folks about an issue and they will be told ‘ask that at the briefing and we’ll answer it.’ They want to answer it in front of everybody. They do know it’s coming and they’ll call on you. There’s that kind of coordination sometimes. I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s sometimes more coordination. I don’t think it’s everybody on every briefing, every day. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I think people would be surprised at the level of cooperation reporters have in general with politicians.”
No one should be “surprised at the level of cooperation reporters have in general with politicians,” considering Attkisson’s former place of employment, which was born of original sin — this is the network where producer Don Hewitt gave both makeup tips and favorable camera angles to JFK in the 1960 debate. Where Walter Cronkite volunteered a helicopter on CBS’s dime to transport Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) to an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1969. The previous year, according to his biographer Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite begged Bobby Kennedy to run for the White House. Where of course, in 2004, Dan Rather blew himself up in an abortive effort to advance John Kerry over the top. (And — shocker! — after departing CBS, Rather, the television anchorman who banged the loudest on his high chair that he was “objective,” began to turn up at far left Nation magazine fundraisers.) And where in late 2009, Katie Couric read Christmas-themed poetry to advance ObamaCare:
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By the way, remember the howls of indignation from the rest of the MSM when former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg reported on his former employer’s leftwing bias over a decade ago in his first book, titled — not at all coincidentally — Bias? No dogs barked last week, when Attkisson also blamed liberal bias on her departure from Black Rock:
Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her packages on television.
At the same time, Attkisson’s own reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. She iscurrently at work on a book — tentatively titled “Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington” — which addresses the challenges of reporting critically on the Obama administration…
But Attkisson had become a polarizing figure at the network, sources there said. While some championed her relentless dedication to investigations — ranging from defective Firestone Tires to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal — others saw evidence of a political agenda, particularly against President Obama. (The bulk of Attkisson’s work since 2009 has focused on the failures or perceived failures of the Obama administration, including the administration’s failed green energy investments and the attack in Benghazi, though she has reported on several Republican failures as well.)
As Allahpundit wrote at Hot Air, “Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Solyndra, the ObamaCare rollout — she’s spent the last five years digging into all of them. In a different world, she would have been promoted to ’60 Minutes’; as it is, per Politico, she spent months negotiating an early end to her contract with CBS.”
Earlier: Walter Cronkite: Liberalism in the Guise of Objectivity.
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