You can bet the farm that right now the media are looking at the results of the bombshell report Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News just dropped and are already coordinating a way to downplay, ignore, or discredit what looks to be a very serious White House scandal that almost certainly involves a cover up.
To its credit, the left-wing Salon is choosing not to downplay what this could all potentially mean for the Obama White House:
There’s been a lot of smoke in the would-be scandal over the Benghazi attacks, but no real fire yet.
But that may change when three “whistle-blowers” give what Republicans expect to be explosive testimony this week before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee. The controversy over the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in the Libyan city has smoldered, mainly on the right, but the testimony will likely push it back into the mainstream and could be an enormous distraction for an already injured second-term Obama.
Unlike the vast majority of the new information brought forward by the conservative media since the attack, the three whistle-blowers seem credible.
Already, though, Salon is crafting an excuse for the media to ignore the new developments:
In the Fast and Furious scandal, analogous in many ways to Benghazi in the way it played out in the media, there was real wrongdoing, but conservatives grasped at straws to make wider, unsubstantiated allegations that let the actual problems largely escape notice.
If the three new witnesses don’t get the attention they deserve, Fox News and its ilk deserve much of the blame.
On its face that might sound like an intellectually stupid argument, but the media is going to grab hold of whatever reason they can to protect Obama and Hillary.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC