Politico’s Dylan Byers leads his own site today with a revealing portrait of Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, one of the few non-Fox News reporters willing to dig into the Obama administration’s many scandals, going all the way back to Fast and Furious. Byers not only paints a portrait of a dogged journalist willing to butt heads with the most powerful man in the world, but also with her own left-wing superiors–including the producer of the “CBS Evening News”:
[I]n light of the Washington press corps’ current distrust of the Obama administration, much of Attkisson’s reporting now seems prescient — the sort of thing one might expect CBS News executives to celebrate publicly.
Instead, suspicions of partisanship have made Attkisson a polarizing figure within her own organization.
CBS News president David Rhodes is said to value her diligence, but there are others, most notably Pat Shevlin, the executive producer of CBS Evening News, who are wary of her motives and have even dismissed her, in private, as a partisan carrying water for Republicans.
Alternatively, some sources suggested that Shevlin’s own political bias, which they described as liberal, was to blame.
When you work at CBS in the capacity Attkisson does, getting on the “CBS Evening News” is what it is all about — it is why you get up in the morning. Therefore, Attkisson’s willingness to rub one of the holders of the keys to that kingdom the wrong way says a lot about her character.
Byers makes another key point when he writes:
Attkisson has written many stories about GOP failures as well as Democratic ones. Her 2008 investigations into the so-called “TARP Bait & Switch” under then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson won her an Emmy award for investigative reporting. In March 2012, she reported on GOP freshman betraying their promises of reforming Washington and instead hobnobbing with fundraisers at a resort in Key Largo.
It is probably a safe bet that Attkisson doesn’t have any problems getting those stories past Shevlin.
Byers’ story is yet more confirmation that there really is a Narrative Plantation controlled by the left. Recently, we learned that Attkisson was/is having trouble getting Libya reports on the air. What does that tell you, especially now that her Libya reporting (as Byers points out) has been vindicated.
Those who control the levers of media power understand the power they hold and how that power can damage a politician. So Obama gets protected from legitimate scandals dug up by the likes of an award-winning reporter like Attkisson, while a nothingburger like PlameGate is exploded like a nuke above the head of George W. Bush.
While we are praising Attkisson for her willingness to uphold the ideals of journalism, let’s not to forget to praise Byers for his reporting of that fact.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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