The News They Kept To Themselves

“CNN All But Ignores Own Scoop That Al Qaeda ‘Appears to Control’ More Arab Land Now Than Ever,” Matt Hadro writes at Newsbusters:

On January 7, CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen wrote on CNN.com that “al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.” However, CNN only mentioned his eye-opening piece once since it was published online.

In contrast to its virtual ignorance of Bergen’s article, CNN reported on Dennis Rodman’s bizarre visit to North Korea on nine different news hours last Wednesday.

It was Bergen himself who gave CNN’s lone citation of the al Qaeda news on Sunday’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, saying of al Qaeda, “Well, they control more territory in the Middle East than they have in their 25-year history.”

However, although CNN reported al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq and Syria multiple times, the network never otherwise repeated Bergen’s specific claim that the group holds more land than ever.

Hey, CNN has a man in the White House need to prop up and an election bid from Hillary looming large; news that “al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history,” doesn’t do much to advance either Democrat’s narrative. And it might cause some on the right to remind their readers that by the time of his reelection bid in November of 2012, Obama “Touted Al Qaeda’s Demise 32 Times since Benghazi Attack:”

President Barack Obama has described al Qaeda as having been “decimated,” “on the path to defeat” or some other variation at least 32 times since the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, according to White House transcripts.

This comes despite Libyan President Mohamed Yousef El-Magarief, members of Congress, an administration spokesperson, and several press reports suggesting that al Qaeda played a role in the attack.

Recently, on Nov. 1 in Green Bay, Wis., Obama said, “Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.”

But apparently, al Qaeda never got that memo from the administration. Or as Charles Krauthammer noted last August:

“Last year in the election race he made no distinction at all. Al-Qaeda was on the run, Bin Laden dead, GM alive, all that stuff. Well, Detroit is dead and Al-Qaeda is obviously alive. It’s a distinction he you wants to make and he pretends he’s always been making it. It does shed light on why they were so insistent on denying that the Benghazi attack was a terror attack by an affiliate of Al-Qaeda.”

Indeed, to coin an Insta-phrase.

But then, CNN is always eager to keep inconvenient Middle East news to themselves when it’s necessary for narrative control.