Disgraced CBS Reporter Demonstrates Why She Is Disgraced

Last month Sharyl Attkisson resigned from her job as an investigative reporter for CBS News. She blamed the departure on what she perceived as a liberal bias by the network’s brass that kept her stories off the air. But that excuse has little support behind it considering the fact that the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes, a former executive at Fox News who presided over the most brazenly biased right-wing propaganda that ever masqueraded as news.

CBS News David Rhodes

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This weekend Attkisson appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources and was subjected, for the first time, to some pushback regarding her version of the events that led to her separation from CBS. In the course of the interview Attkisson made an irresponsible accusation for which she failed to offer any evidence. She alleged that Media Matters may have been paid (by some mysterious entity she declined to name) to attack her and her reporting:

“I clearly at some point became a target. I don’t know if someone paid them to do it or they just took it on their own. […] I think that’s what some of these groups do, absolutely.”

Media Matters responded with a prompt denial saying that their coverage of her was “based only on her shoddy reporting.” And Attkisson’s wild claim about Media Matters is an excellent example of such shoddiness. Without a scintilla of proof, Attkisson went on a national news program and made an accusation of the worst sort of journalistic malfeasance. If that’s the kind of reporting she brought to CBS it’s no wonder they spiked her stories. And it is strikingly lazy, unethical, and self-serving to invent and disseminate an unsupported charge against Media Matters.

For the record, this is not the first time that Atkisson has been caught in an embarrassing breach of ethics. She has produced reports on issues like Benghazi and green energy that were riddled with flaws and omissions. But she seems most prone to crossing the line when the story is about her.

Last year she revealed that her computer was hacked by an unknown intruder. She appeared on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly and implied that the only plausible purpose for the hacking was to intimidate her due to her investigations on Fast and Furious and Benghazi. That put the suspicion squarely on somebody in the administration that didn’t like her snooping into those matters.

However, just as with her smearing of Media Matters, she offered zero evidence of her charges. She dismissed out of hand any possibility that she may just have been one of millions of victims of criminal hacking that goes on every day. At one point O’Reilly asked if she knew who the hacker might be and she said “Well, I think I know. But I am just not prepared to go into that.” This all happened nearly a year ago and Attkisson has still not told us what she allegedly “knows” about the identity of the hacker. What she did say was that she would proceed with her investigations and that she had the full support of CBS:

“We’re continuing to move forward aggressively, CBS News takes this very seriously, as do I.”

What’s interesting about that is that she is admitting that CBS was supportive of her efforts, contrary to her new story that they are hopelessly liberal and were holding her back. She described her relationship with Rhodes, the right-wing former Fox News exec, as being one where they had a “meeting of the minds.” That was her opinion at the time she was actually doing the work. Now that she has left CBS, and is preparing to publish a book that is critical of the Obama administration, her view has flipped 180 degrees, just in time to generate some controversy that might raise interest in her book (which is being published by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins). But I’m sure all of that is just a coincidence.

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There is, however, a clear pattern of sloppy journalism and wild claims when Attkisson spouts off about computer hackers, liberal bias at CBS, and paid attacks from Media Matters, none of which is backed up by any proof. Her tendency to fling unsupported allegations at her perceived enemies shows that the disgrace with which she is now viewed by responsible journalists is well deserved. Lucky for her, Fox News regards that sort of bias and unprofessionalism as an asset, so her future employment prospects look good.

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5 thoughts on “Disgraced CBS Reporter Demonstrates Why She Is Disgraced

  1. You mean she hasn’t been hired by Fox yet? It’s been almost a month. She’s proving herself a petulant creature who’s never to blame for her own failures – she’s perfect for Fox…

  2. It’s nice that there is a media outlet for reporters to go to after they get fired for lying.

  3. She was on Morning Joe and Joe was hand feeding her lines, trying to get her to say the White House was somehow involved in squashing her investigation. When she wouldn’t they moved on to money and at the end Joe said “I want to run this past you one more time to get this clear….” and tried to get her again to say it was a Liberal Media but instead she kept saying it was a “Power” thing. Political, Corporate, Private Billionaires… “who ever has the power at the time influences what is seen on the news” Joe was not happy

  4. Sharyl Attkisson is not disgraced. The people who have disgraced themselves over these interviews are the snarling hyenas at Media Matters and the purveyor of this joke of a website. Sharyl made it clear that there were several reasons why she thought her reports were being ignored, one of them being bias. “Shoddy reporting” was not a reason. She also pointed out that she did not receive these kinds of road blocks with any of her reports when George W. Bush was in office.

    She also stated she can’t discuss the hacking episode until her legal counsel gives her the green light to do so. That is still a work in progress.

    Sharyl Attkisson has journalistic integrity that is unassailable. That type of integrity will never be achieved by the man running this website. Ever.

  5. Sharyl Attkisson has journalistic integrity that is unassailable.

    Please pay attention. There were already four people right here on this page, assailing it.

    That type of integrity will never be achieved by the man running this website. Ever.

    Not everybody aspires to her “type” of integrity.

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