Emmy-winning
investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson appeared on the June 19 “Lou
Dobbs Tonight” program and explained the media isn’t digging into
allegations the White House used the power of the IRS to target
tea-party groups because “propaganda interests” have intimidated
reporters so severely, they’re afraid if they cover the
administration’s scandals, they’ll be seen as a “right-wing nut.”
Attkisson
has twice won Emmys for her investigative journalism and has been
nominated for several more, most recently for her reporting on the Fast
& Furious scandal.
In March 2014, however, Attkisson resigned from CBS News, in part
because of her frustration with the network’s liberal bias and lack of
dedication to investigative reporting.
“Whether it’s Fast and Furious, whether it is spying on a journalist,
whether it’s IRS targeting, Benghazi, the list goes on and on and on,”
Dobbs posited to Attkisson. “Yet the national liberal media, as I often
style it, simply will not rise up to the level of a watchdog for the
state. Instead they are behaving much more like lap dogs. It is, to me,
mind boggling.”
Attkisson suggested some reporters may simply not be that interested in
these scandal stories, but she also suggested there may be more
nefarious forces at work.
“I think to some degree they have been played by propaganda interests
who suggest that if these stories are covered, they are simply phony
scandals and Republican generated. Which they’re not, in my opinion,”
she said. “From a neutral viewpoint there are many important questions
to be asked and implications here. But the propaganda campaign says
that if you’re interested in the story you’re a conservative and a
right-wing nut.
“Media should not be swayed by that,” she concluded, “but I think to
some degree they are.”
Attkisson made similar comments on radio host Laura Ingraham’s program
the same day – not about the IRS scandal, but about the recent flood of
underage illegal immigrants streaming across the U.S. border.
Attkisson explained how “only one side” of certain stories are being
reported, the side sympathetic to illegal immigrants.
“It’s perceived as you’re negative, or you’re mean, or you’re racist
perhaps if you go after these other stories,” she said, “and I simply
don’t think that’s the case, but I feel like there is that kind of
pressure sometimes.”
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