Hey CBS, Sharyl Attkisson’s Scrutiny of Powerful Politicians is a Feature, Not a Bug

Sharyl Attkisson is gone
from CBS News. The award-winning journalist made waves in
recent years by putting the screws to the sitting administration
over issues from the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal to green
subsidies to the Benghazi attack. That is, she “afflicted the
powerful,” as the old adage has it, which is what journalists are
supposed to do unless they’re polishing their resumes for a jump to
public relations. But “the powerful” in recent years has meant, in
part, an administration with which many journalists like to coo and
play footsie. And Attkisson upset a lot of colleagues at CBS News
by asking hard questions when the answers were awkward.

Acording to Politico‘s
Dylan Byers:

Attkisson, who had been with CBS News for more than two decades,
had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal
bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners, and
a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources
said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer supported
and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.

At the same time, Attkisson’s coverage of the Obama
administration, which some CBS staffers characterized as
agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality
of her reporting. The bulk of Attkisson’s work since 2009 has
focused on the failures or perceived failures of the
administration, including its troubled green-energy investments and
the attack in Benghazi.

Impartiality-wise, it’s woth noting that the president of CBS
News is David
Rhodes, the brother of White House speechwriter Ben
Rhodes. But that relationship is apparently less of a problem
than querying government officials on matters they’d rather gloss
over.

For the record, “impartiality” in such matter would mean that
Attkisson turned the bright lights on Republicans as
enthusiastically as on Democrats. In fact, her CBS News bio
reports that she “received an Emmy Award for Outstanding
Investigative Journalism for her reporting on ‘The Business of
Congress,’ which included a ‘CBS This Morning’ undercover
investigation into fundraising by Republican freshmen.”

But even if Attkisson is a partisan who treats conservatives
with kid gloves, that just means you send her after left-leaning
politicans, and one of her colleages after right-leaning
politicians. She’s obviously diligent about interrogating at least
some officeholders, which is more than you can say about
too many of her colleagues. Who cares if a journalist is partial as
long as you keep him or her pointed at a target?

While Attkisson’s colleagues at CBS News may echo White House
staff complaints that she’s too mean to the president and his
friends, this is an administration that has been notoriously
opaque. A
2013 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists quoted
David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The
New York Times, descibing the Obama administration as “the
most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

That report added:

In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials
are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. Those suspected of
discussing with reporters anything that the government has
classified as secret are subject to investigation, including
lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail
records. An “Insider Threat Program” being implemented in every
government department requires all federal employees to help
prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the
behavior of their colleagues.

You’d think a news outfit would be happy to have somebody on
board who was willing to penetrate those circled wagons and dig for
information. That is, after all,what journalists are supposed to
do.