Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh has joined four other well-known conservative leaders to call on ABC, CBS, and NBC to stop ignoring the IRS targeting scandal and to start reporting the news about the growing evidence in the case.
Limbaugh, Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, David Bossie, head of Citizens United, and Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder Tea Party Patriots joined together with Brent Bozell, President and Founder of the Media Research Center (MRC), to demand that the big three networks to stop censuring the news.
“No fair, objective journalist can look at the facts of this flagrant abuse of power and not conclude that it is a massive political scandal deserving of constant, merciless scrutiny,” these conservative leaders said in their statement. “Any ‘so-called’ journalist who says otherwise is at best an ethically bankrupt shill for the administration and at worst thinks conservatives should be persecuted by the government for their beliefs.”
Even as the scandal has been growing reportage by the networks has dwindled to next to nothing.
According to the Media Research Center,
When news first broke that the IRS was targeting conservative groups – particularly the Tea Party–the Big Three news networks jumped to cover the story, filling their evening and morning shows with a total of 96 stories in the first two weeks (May 10 through May 23). But after those two strong weeks, the broadcast networks predictably lost interest in the scandal, and the coverage slowed to a crawl – just 32 stories in the subsequent weeks (May 24 through June 17). From June 18 through June 28 there were a total of only 11 stories on the Big Three evening and morning shows about IRS abuses. There were zero stories from June 28 until July 24, when CBS Evening News gave the scandal a minute and a half — the only network coverage for the entire month of July so far.
Yet since the networks have turned away from the story, evidence is mounting that the scandal does reach all the way to the White House quite despite early claims to the contrary made by flacks for the Administration.
Only this week it was revealed that Obama appointee, IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, was fully informed about the practice of intimidating conservative groups applying to the tax agency for a tax status. Despite this fact, the big three have practically ignored this development.
The MRC found, only CBS’s Scott Pelley has mentioned this connection on air during an interview with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
This refusal to report the news brought this group of high profile conservatives to call for the networks to stop ignoring the facts in the IRS scandal.
Full Statement
“This IRS scandal is worse than Richard Nixon using the IRS to punish his powerful political enemies. This is an unprecedented abuse of IRS power perpetrated by liberals to persecute and harass ordinary American citizens – the same ordinary American citizens who rely on ABC, CBS, and NBC to report the news fairly and accurately.
“The liberal media’s refusal to cover the IRS scandal – more than the NSA scandal, more than DOJ’s surveillance of journalists, more even than the tragic loss of life in Benghazi – cuts to the very heart of their corruption. No fair, objective journalist can look at the facts of this flagrant abuse of power and not conclude that it is a massive political scandal deserving of constant, merciless scrutiny.
“Any ‘so-called’ journalist who says otherwise is at best an ethically bankrupt shill for the administration and at worst thinks conservatives should be persecuted by the government for their beliefs.”
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