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Benghazi: Who’s Not Talking?

May 10, 2013 by Michael E Conner

Fox News spent all week, virtually all day every day reporting on Benghazi. By contrast, CNN’s attention to it this week is virtually immeasurable.

Why is that?

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It’s Friday and so now it is safe to say that CNN has placed absolutely no import on Benghazi, whether the hearings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday, or any other discussion all week. As we have monitored the present Big Two: Fox News and CNN, we have observed nothing from CNN throughout the week. By incredibly stark contrast, Fox has kept it front and center daily; most notably their exclusive broadcast of the Capitol Hill hearings of Wednesday and Thursday.

Of course, we know the murder case in Arizona really is more… well…everything, and that is clearly why CNN has focused on it almost exclusively throughout 09 and 10 May. No question: supporters of either forum would say it is typical and predictable.

This week Rush Limbaugh had some pretty ugly commentary as to why most of the media doesn’t care. Ugly, but he made a solid point: sex is what sells. By comparison to so many other issues in the news today, Benghazi is not sexy. Fox promotes their news coverage as “Fair and Balanced”. If they have been unfair and out of balance covering Benghazi so intensively, then what of CNN?

Oh, sorry. CNN did devote other non-Jodi Arias time to the Michael Jackson death case resurgence. Fox covered that too, but much less so. Negligence, in a word. And slackers, too.

But viewed in a serious perspective – and in all seriousness – CNN appears to believe Benghazi is not worthy of serious treatment, having neglected even a one-minute update – any minute – during any prime viewing hour any day this week. It did not happen, as best we can find. It is a stunning and alarming journalistic violation. This was Charles Krauthammer’s accusation last October. Scandalous is just the right word.

Turns out CNN did cover it – off-prime and only briefly, once, maybe twice this week. Off-prime, and other major media outlets such as CBS and ABC gave Benghazi plus-or-minus four minutes or so each occasionally over the course of the week.

So an interesting and revealing phenomenon has occurred: One cannot report on lack of journalistic integrity – as any and all of the national outlets ought to subscribe to doing as part of their charter to serve the public good – when one is, by the sin of omission, the very one who has violated the rule of integrity. Seems that this is telling, the declarations we can make by our silence.

We’ve got one word for you: It’s ugly and it’s going to get uglier.

So that’s the question: Why?

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Internet and/or print references in support of these observations:

The Christian Science Monitor, Hicks testimony, 08 May, 2013

The Media Research Center, 09 May 2013

National Review Online, Ted Cruz, eight months later, 08 May 2013

WBUR-Boston, Clinton testimony, 23 Jan 2013

Mediaite, Limbaugh, media don’t care, 09 May 2013

FoxNews Insider, Megyn Kelly, 09 May 2013

FoxNews Insider, story ranks third, 10 May 2013

Business Insider.com, Jon Stewart criticism of FoxNews, 08 May 2013