“Jeff Fager has stepped down as chairman of CBS News, leaving full command of the news division to David Rhodes, two sources at the network told POLITICO on Thursday,” Dylan Byers reports:
Fager, who spent four years as chairman, will return to CBS’ “60 Minutes” full-time as executive producer, effective at the beginning of the new year. Rhodes, who Fager hired as president four years ago, will remain in that role and assume sole leadership of the division.
As the Daily Caller noted in May of 2013, “Top Obama official’s brother is president of CBS News, may drop reporter over Benghazi coverage.” That reporter was Sharyl Attkisson who has since left CBS:
“We still don’t know who changed talking points but have had at least 4 diff explanations so far,” Attkisson tweeted on November 27, 2012.
But 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.
Curiously, the relationship between the two Rhodes isn’t referenced in Byers’ story above, or in this article on Jeff Fager stepping down at the Huffington Post.
Unexpectedly.
Related: “Bombshell: Email Proves that White House, DOJ Targeted Reporter Sharyl Attkisson,” from Bryan Preston at the PJ Tatler. I’m sure CBS will want to blow the lid off this story…
Update:
Fun email from Justice Department public affairs on @SharylAttkisson that @JudicialWatch just dug up pic.twitter.com/9EsrQotTM9
— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) November 20, 2014
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