After Jake Tapper exposed ABC’s Benghazi email scoop as edited to make Obama look bad, ABC News admitted that they lied to America. They never actually read the original emails.
In their May 10th exclusive, ABC News claimed that they had obtained the Benghazi emails, “ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.”
Later in the same story, ABC’s Jonathan Karl wrote, “White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.”
After CNN’s Jake Tapper exposed ABC’s report was based on information that was edited in order to make the Obama administration look bad, ABC tried to explain away their lies by claiming that their inaccurate story, and the actual emails are the same thing, “Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.”
In the process of trying to defend himself, Karl exposed his own lies, “This is how I reported the contents of that e-mail, quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” (In his original story, Karl claimed that ABC News had obtained the emails. This obviously wasn’t true.)
Karl also explained that he and ABC News never reviewed the emails, “The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.”
Jon Karl wrote that nobody could get copies the emails. If this was true, how did Jake Tapper get them?
The truth is that Karl’s source was likely someone within the Republican House, because these emails were made available to the Republicans investigating Benghazi months ago. (Before Karl came to ABC he was a congressional correspondent at CNN, so connect the dots. Plus, it wasn’t a coincidence that this story broke days before House Republicans held another Benghazi hearing.)
However, none of this explains why Karl and ABC News would claim to have obtained and reviewed emails that they never saw or had.
ABC News and Karl lied in their original story. They made claims that were not true in order to hype their exclusive. It was not only misleading of ABC News to present the story in this way, but it was also irresponsible and wrong.
What really happened here was that the so-called liberal media at ABC News lied, and furthered the conspiracy laced agenda of House Republicans.
Tapper’s reporting is a bit of vindication for CNN after John King’s dark skinned Boston bomber has been arrested debacle, but the overall portrait of the mainstream media is discouraging.
The corporate media has proven time and again that they can’t be trusted. For profit news is about getting the story first, not getting it right. They have also shown aren’t beneath lying and smearing a president with a bogus conspiracy if it will make their corporate owners even richer.
Is it any wonder why people are turning them off?
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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