Former CBS reporter details ‘aggressive’ Obama administration pressure, ‘chilling effect’ on media
Former CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson discussed her former employer Sunday and the “chilling effect” she says the Obama administration has on their reporting.
photo Charles Fettinger via Flickr
“I didn’t run into that same kind of sentiment (at CBS) as I did in the Obama administration when I covered the Bush administration very aggressively,” Attkisson told “Media Buzz” host Howard Kurtz.
“It never runs,” she continued. “Or it dies the death of a thousand cuts, as some of us say. If it’s something they don’t want it will be changed and revised and shortened and altered so much that it’s a shadow of its former self if it does air.”
Attkisson, who had been active in covering the aftermath of the Benghazi terror attacks and the Fast and Furious scandal, abruptly announced she had resigned from CBS News last month. According to Politico, sources said Attkisson had grown increasingly frustrated by what she perceived as a liberal bias at CBS News.
“There is pressure coming to bear on journalists for just doing their job in ways that have never come to bear before,” she said. “Now there’ve always been tensions, there have always been calls from the White House under any administration I assume, when they don’t like a particular story.”
“But it is particularly aggressive under the Obama administration and I think it’s a campaign that’s very well organized, that’s designed to have sort of a chilling effect and to some degree has been somewhat successful in getting broadcast producers who don’t really want to deal with the headache of it,” Attkisson continued. “Why put on these controversial stories that we’re going to have to fight people on, when we can fill the broadcast with other perfectly decent stories that don’t ruffle the same feathers?”
Attkisson said that she personally felt heat from the Obama administration and added that sometimes White House officials went over her head and attempted to apply pressure to her bosses.
