Flashback: CBS Barred Benghazi Reporter Attkisson from Receiving CPAC Award

As Politico’s Dylan Byers wrote Friday tensions remain very high in the hallways of CBS News as Sharyl Attkisson continues to butt heads with producers unwilling to give her stories air time on CBS Evening News. The tensions began when Attkisson was the only reporter at the network willing to investigate the Fast and Furious scandal: the Justice Department’s involvement with gun running across the Mexican border that ended with the murder of a US Border Agent. 

Now that recent scandals surrounding Eric Holder’s DOJ show more instances of heavy-handed law-fare against reporters, Byers supposes there may be vindication in Attkisson’s past unpopular actions at CBS, but tensions still exist:  

[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.

This seems a good time to remember the baffling and humiliating decision of Attkisson’s CBS superiors to not allow her to receive an investigative journalism award from Accuracy In Media at the 2011 CPAC conference. At the time, it was spun by the network thusly: 

Logan Churchwell, a spokesperson with Accuracy in Media, told TPM that Attkisson was sent on assignment out of town. Churchwell confirmed that CBS‘ bureau chief will accept the award on her behalf. “It’s unfortunate (she won’t attend),” Churchwell said, but “we can understand the circumstances.”

But in reality, the last minute “assignment” for Attkisson came just days after widely discredited left-wing fringe group Media Matters for America bullied CBS to snub the award:  

CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson is set to receive a journalism award at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference from Accuracy in Media, a right-wing group with a long history of promoting anti-gay views and conspiracy theories. Attkisson — the first reporter from a mainstream news outlet to receive AIM’s annual award — has produced some notably bad journalism over the past year, particularly on the topics of clean energy and vaccines.

Attkisson’s fight continues.