Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) said Monday that while Cruz was cordial on board the flight to South Africa, she and others were "curious" about what motivated the tea party senator to join the delegation.
"I think that he was on the spot because there were many members who were curious, you know, about why he would want to take this pilgrimage," Moore said on MSNBC. "This was a solemn — it was hard trip, 40 hours and turning right around. And even the senator had to come right back and vote at 1 a.m."
Moore pointed out that the delegation was comprised mostly of Democrats, including some lawmakers who were active in the anti-apartheid movement.
"And so there was a lot of curiosity about [Cruz]," she said.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who was also in the delegation, said last week that Cruz "got an earful" from his Democratic counterparts on the flight.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Megyn Kelly's Non-Apology And Fox News' Race Baiting
JEREMY HOLDEN/Media Matters For America
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Megyn Kelly is insisting that critics who took her to task for insisting that Santa Claus is a white man were motivated by a "knee-jerk instinct" to "race bait," a hollow claim given Kelly's own history of using race to stoke fears of minorities.
Kelly triggered outrage on December 11 when she insisted that Santa was -- and is -- a white man, comments that came in response to a Slate column arguing that the universal portrayal of Santa as white can alienate and ostracize minority children. On December 13, Kelly responded to her critics by accusing them of race-baiting and targeting her simply because she worked at Fox:
Kelly's claim that her critics were motivated by a desire to use racially provocative language to trigger an emotional reaction is not just self-serving, it also underscores Kelly's own history of using race to stoke fears of minorities.
In 2010, Kelly was one of the loudest voices at Fox News pushing its aggressive campaign to exploit racial tensions over a voter intimidation case in Philadelphia.
During a two-week stretch in July of that year, Kelly's daytime show devoted a staggering 45 segments and 3.5 hours to hyping politically motivated and completely discredited allegations that President Obama and Eric Holder were manipulating the Justice Department in order to protect the New Black Panther Party from prosecution over charges that it intimidated white voters during the 2008 election. Kelly's over-the-top race baiting led Gawker to ask whether she was "obsessed" with the New Black Panthers. Dave Weigel wrote, under the headline "Megyn Kelly's Minstrel Show," that Kelly was exploiting racial tensions in a dangerous way:
Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder's DOJ.
Her own Fox colleague, Kirsten Powers, even called Kelly out for what she called "doing the scary black man thing" by dishonestly hyping the case.
When Kelly transitioned from her daytime "news" show to a prime-time slot, she told the Los Angeles Times that she was a journalist, not an ideologue. So it's telling that in addressing her critics, Kelly claimed that she was simply asking whether the depiction of Santa Claus as a white man should change.
In reality, Kelly was not only adamant that Santa remain white -- settling the debate in a manner more in line with an ideologue rather than a journalist. She also protested against the very idea that society would change its icons in order to accommodate minority groups who find those images to be alienating:
KELLY: Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change. Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact -- as is Santa.
That conclusion, which highlights the way Kelly uses her position of power to assert and defend her cultural dominance, led Jon Stewart to point out the oppressive nature of Kelly's stated position.
In a lengthy profile just before her white Santa comments, The Washington Post referred to Kelly as "queen" of television news who, unlike Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, whose opinion shows appear before and after The Kelly File, "markets herself as a break in the clouds, an interlude of lucidity, a host who protects her viewers by condensing complex issues into digestible bits, by cross-examining news analysis with zero tolerance for guff."
But the reality is that Kelly's brand of ideological demagoguery is very much in line with the race-baiting that has been central to the culture wars that have always been fought on Fox News.
Here's how Kelly justified her insistence that Santa Claus is white while lashing out at her critics:
KELLY: Well, this would be funny if it were not so telling about our society. In particular the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel. Contrary to what my critics have posited, neither my statement nor Harris's, I'm sure, was motivated by any racial fear or loathing. In fact, it was something far less sinister. A lifetime of exposure to the very same, quote, commercials, mall-casting calls and movies Harris references in her piece. From "Miracle on 34th Street" to the Thanksgiving Day Parade to the national Christmas tree lighting, we continually see St. Nick as a white man in modern day America. Should that change?Well, that debate got lost, because so many couldn't get past the fact that I acknowledged, as Harris did, that the most commonly depicted image of Santa does in fact have white skin.
Tea Party group posts video game image mocking Tea Party
By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story
A Florida Tea Party group found itself on the defensive Monday after posting a photo from a video game that was actually making fun of its political leanings.
“We don’t take credit for the image,” National Liberty Federation (NLF) president Everett Wilkinson told The Raw Story in a phone interview. “We have no association with the game. I’d never heard of the game. I’m as clueless, probably, as most people.”
MSNBC reported that the picture, taken from the video game Bioshock Infinite, went up on the group’s Facebook page on Saturday, and depicts George Washington holding the Liberty Bell and the Ten Commandments while caricatures of “immigrants” hover at his sides, with the words, “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes” at the bottom. The post was taken down Monday, but here’s a screengrab:
National Liberty Federation Bioshock FB
As video game news site Kotaku pointed out, the picture is used in the game as propaganda by a group of xenophobic characters called the Founders. Kotaku also reported on Friday that members of the white-supremacist online forum Stormfront criticized the game for employing “strange, borderline-deranged (if not psychotic) themes with anti-White undertones” and accused Ken Levine, owner of Bioshock developers Irrational Games of using the game as a “white-person-killing simulator.”
“Since games are distributed and advertised through much of the same pipelines as Hollywood movies, Jews have a temendous advantage in the industry, since as everyone knows they already control Hollywood,” one Stormfront user posted. “This means competition can be choked out, and their own games bolstered to success.”
On Monday, Wilkinson said his group — previously known as the South Florida Tea Party — “removed” the person who posted the image.
“We’re a conservative organization, so we understand that some people may not necessarily like our views,” Wilkinson told Raw Story. “But we don’t tolerate racism, what you might consider hate messages or anything like it.”
However, MSNBC reported that while the Bioshock post was taken down, a post comparing Islam to rabies in a quote attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is still active, as are posts comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and to cancer.
“We’re not like the Christian Coalition, where we bash gays or anything,” Wilkinson said on Monday. “I actually have gay donors and supporters, and Black donors and supporters. So we’re very sensitive to stuff like that.”
Monday, December 16, 2013
Neal Boortz defends ‘white Santa’: ‘Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black!’
By David Edwards/Raw Story
A self-described libertarian radio host on Monday defended Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s assertion that Santa Claus was white, saying he was going to “scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black.”
In a clip obtained by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, Herman Cain radio show guest host Neal Boortz speaks to a caller who called to complain that Kelly had been criticized after she recently said that both Santa and Jesus Christ were white men.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Santa Claus is white!” Boortz exclaims. “Okay? Deal with it!”
“Everything has got to be black now, it doesn’t matter what it is,” the caller laments.
“You know, I’m going to scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black,” Boortz quips. “It just ain’t right.”
Boortz goes on to predict that he was going to “chase away” about 100,000 of Herman Cain’s listeners before the show was over.
Listen to the audio below from the Herman Cain Show, broadcast Dec. 16, 2013.
Pro-Choice Activists Could Still Repeal Michigan’s New ‘Rape Insurance’ Law
BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress
Last week, the Michigan legislature approved a measure that prevents women from using their private insurance plans to cover abortion services, even in cases of rape and incest. The legislation, widely decried as a “rape insurance” bill, incited fierce debate. One Democratic lawmaker shared her personal story of sexual assault on the floor, pointing out that women shouldn’t be required to purchase a separate insurance rider in case they become pregnant from rape at some point in the future. Nonetheless, the bill passed along mostly party lines.
Since the legislation was “citizen-initiated” — the anti-choice community collected over 300,000 signatures to provoke a vote on the measure — it doesn’t need the governor’s signature, and will become law 90 days after lawmakers adjourn for the year. But reproductive rights activists still have options left. They could circulate a petition of their own to collect enough signatures for a public referendum, which would put the measure up for a statewide vote.
Pro-choice activists are already considering that type of ballot drive, according to the Associated Press. Democrats in the legislature are vowing to keep the pressure on this issue well into 2014. If they’re successful, the insurance restriction will come up for a popular vote around the same time as next November’s legislative elections.
In order to advance a referendum, Michigan state law requires activists to collect 161,305 signatures within 90 days of the legislature’s adjournment. That’s considerably fewer signatures than the anti-choice community needed to get this issue up for a vote. They were required to collect 258,088, a threshold which they ended up exceeding.
Women’s health groups say there’s plenty of evidence to suggest voters will reject the measure if it’s subject to a popular vote. According to Michigan’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), some of the lawmakers who voted for the bill represent districts where 60 to 70 percent of constituents are opposed to it. “They didn’t see this as an abortion issue,” ACLU lobbyist Shelli Weisberg explained to the AP. “They saw it as a coverage issue, as a privacy issue, as an issue that deals with commerce and not legislation. They didn’t want the Legislature trying to interfere with medical decisions.”
That’s the same reason that the state’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, vetoed the measure last year. Snyder pointed out that the legislation went too far to interfere in the private insurance market.
Opponents are planning to gather on Monday morning to rally against the new law. “This is wrong. This is disgusting. We cannot let this prevail. Join us in the fight to repeal the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act,” the Facebook event reads.
Nonetheless, Michigan is hardly the only state with this type of restriction on the books. Barring insurance coverage for abortion services is a popular method of attacking reproductive rights. Eight other states — Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah — also restrict abortion coverage in all private insurance plans offered in the state. And nearly two dozen states bar Obamacare’s new insurance marketplaces from including plans that cover abortion.
This Bizarre Racial Profiling Lawsuit Will Do Nothing To Restore Your Faith In Mississippi
BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress
Cathryn Stout is a doctoral student at Saint Louis University researching a paper on how residents of Mississippi are working to combat negative stereotypes about their state. She may want to reconsider that paper topic, however, after her alleged encounter with three Mississippi police officers.
According to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday, Stout was traveling through Mississippi with a man named Raymond Montgomery to conduct interviews for her academic research when they were stopped by a highway patrol officer. Both Stout and Montgomery are African American.
The trooper allegedly told them they were stopped because Stout’s license plate was framed by an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority tag holder that obscured part of her plate. He issued no ticket for this supposed violation, however, and her attorney claims that her tag holder broke no Mississippi law. Alpha Kappa Alpha is an historically black sorority.
After Montgomery denied a request by the trooper to search the vehicle, the lawsuit alleges that things escalated very quickly. Over the course of the next hour, two more police officers arrived on the scene, including a police staff sergeant and an officer with a police dog. The officers interrogated Stout about the purpose of her trip to Mississippi. They asked if anyone had asked them to “transport anything” or if they were carrying weapons. When Stout began to video record the encounter with her cell phone, one of the officers allegedly ordered her to put her phone away. By the time the police finally let Stout and Montgomery go, the lawsuit alleges, the officers had rummaged through their luggage and Stout’s purse. They’d searched every compartment of the vehicle, and they’d used a wrench and a crowbar to remove the panels on the sides of Stout’s car.
They found nothing incriminating.
The Supreme Court has made these kinds of lawsuits very difficult to win. Among other things, the Court held in Whren v. United States that police who witness a driver committing a minor traffic offense can use that offense as a pretext to stop the vehicle and potentially escalate the stop into a search for evidence of a much more serious crime. Nevertheless, there are factors in Stout and Montgomery’s case — the possibility of racial profiling, the fact that police may has escalated the search without any valid justification for doing so, the fact that Stout’s license plate holder may not have violated any actual laws — that could enable them to prevail.
In the meantime, however, both Stout and Montgomery sought counseling to deal with the emotional toll exacted by this alleged incident. Stout also has not returned to central Mississippi, despite the fact that these trips are a useful component of her academic research, “due to emotional wounds and fear of a similar incident.”
Is The GOP Becoming Gentler And Kinder Ahead Of The 2014 Elections?
BY IGOR VOLSKY/Think Progress
The New York Time suggested Monday that some of the Republicans running for Congress in 2014 have moderated their rhetoric, embracing a gentler, kinder tone “in favor of a narrower focus on the Affordable Care Act.”
Some of these candidates — particularly those who ran in 2012 and lost — have “shelved their incendiary remarks about President Obama and the national debt” and hope to use the health care law to “attract moderate voters from both parties, even in heavily Democratic districts, who are disenchanted with its rollout.” The administration’s troubles in implementing the Affordable Care Act may have actually had the effect of mellowing out Republicans, the piece argues, providing them with a singular issue on which to focus their ire:
The campaigns, if successful, could be an indication of change in some corners of the Republican Party as many former firebrands mellow their messages and people like Mr. [Bob] Dold, who benefited from the Tea Party but was one of the more moderate members of the House, try to capitalize on the center. At the very least, their campaigns show that some people who ran vociferously against Washington appear eager to get back there.
But the shift — however slight — is rhetorical; it doesn’t signal any real change in policy or an effort by Republicans to stop obstructing the implementation of health care reform. Quite the opposite: even as millions of Americans are signing up for coverage — and are preparing to go to doctors and hospitals with their new insurance plans on Jan. 1 — the GOP sees undoing the ACA as the key to electoral success in 2014. That, after all was the impetus behind the short-term budget resolution. As GOP strategist Ford O’Connell put it to the Washington Times, “This was the establishment wing of the party telling the base that elections have consequences. Because Obamacare is the golden goose for 2014, they don’t want to have anything interfere with making as many gains as possible in Congress — particularly in the Senate.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) agreed, telling Meet The Press on Sunday, “On our side of the aisle, we like the fact for the economy, no shutdowns. We also don’t want to have shutdown drama so we can focus on replacing Obamacare, so we can focus on showing better ideas and what this is coming in.”
Republicans have tried to showcase these “better ideas” in 2010 and 2012 but have failed to rally around anything but repeal — a position that the candidates in the Times story — Bob Dold, Nan Hayworth, Martha McSally — all proudly support.
So yes, some Republicans may try to distance themselves from some of the inflammatory rhetoric that dominated the 2010 Tea Party surge and the ill-orchestrated government shutdown three years later. But the party is still working to deny or take away health care coverage from millions of Americans. And there is nothing “moderate” about that.
Saturday, December 07, 2013
The Benghazi Hoax Chapter 16: 60 Minutes
DAVID BROCK, ARI RABIN-HAVT, & MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
After the publication of Media Matters' ebook The Benghazi Hoax, which tells the story of how the right twisted a tragedy into a failed witch hunt against the Obama administration, CBS News came under fire from media critics and journalism experts for airing a botched 60 Minutes report on Benghazi that featured a supposed eyewitness to the attacks who had lied about his actions the night of the attack. The story resulted in an internal investigation into how 60 Minutes got it wrong and a leave of absence by correspondent Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan. Here's the story of how CBS got burned by the Benghazi hoax.
For more on conservative media myths about the September 2012 attack, read The Benghazi Hoax, the new ebook by Media Matters' David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt.
60 Minutes had a bombshell -- or so it thought. Correspondent Lara Logan and her producer Max McClellan had spent more than a year investigating the attack in Benghazi and conducted more than 100 interviews. They wanted to give the news magazine's audience a firsthand account of what took place on September 11, 2012.
The heavily promoted report was 60 Minutes' lead story on the evening of October 27, 2013. Immediately, it was obvious that the program had fallen for several of the previously debunked Benghazi hoaxes. Most notably, in Logan's interview with "whistleblower" Greg Hicks, she led off by saying, "The lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya."
There were no lingering questions about the military's response. Those questions had been repeatedly asked and answered, by the Accountability Review Board, during congressional hearings, and in numerous media accounts of the event.
For months, generals and former defense secretaries including Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, and Gen. Martin Dempsey had debunked the idea that the United States could have responded to the attack in Benghazi quicker or with more force.
Logan also claimed the CIA teams stationed at the annex was ordered "to wait" before responding to the attack. This falsehood was debunked by the Accountability Review Board, which wrote "the departure of the Annex team was not delayed by orders from superiors."
The new element in CBS' report -- designed to draw buzz to the subject -- was an interview that Logan conducted with "Morgan Jones," who was identified as a "former British soldier" and "security officer who witnessed the attack." 60 Minutes told viewers that "Morgan Jones" was a pseudonym he was using "for his own safety."
In actuality, "Jones" was a private security contractor named Dylan Davies who worked for Blue Mountain Security, a British company run by a former SAS officer. Blue Mountain was responsible for the diplomatic compound's locally hired unarmed guards, whose assignments included raising and lowering the security gate, checking IDs, and other basic security tasks.
During his 60 Minutes interview, Davies suggested a key problem in Benghazi was that his guards remained unarmed, while a second Libyan security force -- the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a group Davies claimed to be incompetent -- provided armed security. While this claim was in line with the Accountability Review Board's findings, Davies' faith in his own employees at Blue Mountain was contradicted by both media reports about their performance and the Accountability Review Board, which wrote in its unclassified report that the Blue Mountain guards were "poorly skilled."
The most compelling part of Davies' 60 Minutes interview was his harrowing and heroic tale from that night -- one that was the center of a book he had co-written. The book, called The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There, would be published later that week by Threshold, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Unmentioned throughout the 60 Minutes report was the fact that Simon & Schuster and CBS share a parent company, suggesting that CBS could have had a financial motivation for running a report hyping Davies' story.
In the book and on 60 Minutes, Davies talked about hearing gunshots in a phone call he received from one of the local guards he oversaw at the compound, which was 15 minutes away from where he lived in the city. In a plot straight out of a James Bond film, Davies claimed that went to the compound and scaled its 12-foot wall as Al Qaeda fighters rampaged through the facility.
Davies said, "One guy saw me. He just shouted. I couldn't believe that he'd seen me 'cause it was so dark. He started walkin' towards me."
According to the former British soldier, the excitement continued: "I just hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face" and "he went down." This was further dramatized during his interview with Logan, in which she led hersubject:
LARA LOGAN: He dropped?MORGAN JONES: Yeah, like -- like a stone.LOGAN: With his face smashed in?JONES: Yeah.
The right was ecstatic. Even though the report did not mention President Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they claimed the report had vindicated their year of scandalmongering. Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg expressed the feelings of many on the right, tweeting, "This 60 Minutes #benghazi piece corroborates pretty much everything #foxnews has reported so far." The day after the 60 Minutes segment aired, Fox News would run 13 segments on 11 programs, for a total of more than 47 minutes of coverage. Echoing Goldberg, Bret Baier proclaimed, "Last night, one of journalism's heavy hitters reaffirmed what we knew and had reported on." On Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy blustered, "60 Minutes doesn't cover phony scandals."
From The 700 Club to Breitbart.com, conservatives joined Fox in cheering the 60 Minutes report.
This was ironic, given the fact that 60 Minutes had long been derided by conservatives, in particular for Dan Rather's report on George W. Bush's National Guard service, for which Rather later apologized.
The right's excitement was overblown, as usual. The 60 Minutes report followed the same pattern as every other element of the Benghazi hoax documented in this book. Supposedly new revelations were simply warmed-over versions of hoaxes debunked months before; context that would provide critical information to viewers or readers was missing; and the right-wing media exaggerated the new allegations from the original report into something unrecognizable.
Nothing in the 60 Minutes report implicated Obama or Clinton in any wrongdoing leading up to the attack in Benghazi -- in fact, their names were never mentioned. But conservatives were already on the attack against the president and former secretary of state.
On the Monday after the Davies episode of 60 Minutes aired, Sen. Lindsey Graham threatened to block everynomination before the Senate until "the survivors [of Benghazi] are being made available to Congress." The South Carolina senator never mentioned that the survivors had already answered questions from numerous investigators and that the Senate had access to those interviews. Graham was joined by fellow Benghazi hoaxsters Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Sen. Kelly Ayotte in promoting the report.
One moment that raised a red flag the day after the report aired was an offhand statement from Fox News correspondent Adam Housley, who reported that Davies had been a source of his. However, Housley said, he had "stopped speaking to him when he asked for money."
Initially, 60 Minutes refused to apologize, except for its failure to disclose the financial relationship between CBS and the book's publisher. In the middle of that week, the story took its first blow when The Washington Postreported that an incident report from Davies contradicted the account he provided on 60 Minutes and in his book:
In Davies's 2 1/ 2-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, "we could not get anywhere near ... as roadblocks had been set up."He learned of Stevens's death, Davies wrote, when a Libyan colleague who had been at the hospital came to the villa to show him a cellphone picture of the ambassador's blackened corpse. Davies wrote that he visited the still-smoking compound the next day to view and photograph the destruction.
60 Minutes held fast, telling the paper that it "stand[s] firmly by the story we broadcast last Sunday."
Over the next few days, CBS stonewalled many in the press, refusing to speak on the phone with several major media reporters, choosing instead to send out terse emails that often failed to answer basic and appropriate questions about the story.
After refusing to speak with The Washington Post, Davies resurfaced to talk with Eli Lake of The Daily Beast. Lake was likely chosen because of his status as a right-wing foreign policy reporter who writes for a mainstream publication. Davies told Lake he "believed there was a coordinated campaign to smear him."
Responding to the idea that there was a discrepancy between the Blue Mountain incident report and the story he told 60 Minutes, Davies claimed he did not write the document in question but that the story it contained did match what he told his supervisor at the company. He said the story in the incident report was a lie he told to hide the fact that he had disobeyed his boss, who had ordered him to stay at his villa.
While 60 Minutes continued to defend its piece, Lara Logan told The New York Times that she "attributed the critical response to the report to the intense political warfare that has surrounded the episode."
Prominent authorities on journalism were not so kind. Interviewed by Media Matters' Joe Strupp, many spoke out in shock at CBS' behavior including Kelly McBride of The Poynter Institute who said, "What they should have acknowledged was the fact that he wrote a report saying that he wasn't at the site." She continued, "They should have acknowledged that ... they either didn't know about it or they failed to anticipate that critics would use this as a way of tearing down their story." She concluded that "considering that this guy, that his very presence at the compound that night is in question, they could have tried to verify from other sources that he was. Other sources, even if those were off the record sources, they could have done something to address this discrepancy."
On the evening of November 7, 60 Minutes' story completely imploded. The New York Times' Bill Carter and Michael S. Schmidt reported that Davies "gave the F.B.I. an account of the night that terrorists attacked the mission on Sept. 11, 2012 that contradicts a version of events he provided in a recently published book and in an interview." This contrasted directly with Davies' claim that his interview with the FBI lined up with the account in his book and on 60 Minutes.
CBS finally had to concede the story was fatally flawed. Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes, told the Times, "We're surprised to hear about this, and if it shows we've been misled, we will make a correction." The network pulled the story off its website and YouTube channel, and it posted a statement that read: "60 Minutes has learned of new information that undercuts the account told to us by Morgan Jones of his actions on the night of the attack on the Benghazi compound. We are currently looking into this serious matter to determine if he misled us, and if so, we will make a correction."
Appearing on CBS This Morning the next day, Logan said, "We were wrong. We made a mistake." She also told the audience that 60 Minutes would issue a correction the following Sunday. As CBS offered apologies, Threshold decided to take the costly step of pulling The Embassy House from circulation.
On Sunday, at the tail end of the program, Logan appeared on camera to issue her correction. "We end our broadcast tonight with a correction on a story we reported October 27 about the attack on the American special mission compound in Benghazi, in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed," Logan said. "In the story, a security officer working for the State Department, Dylan Davies, told us he went to the compound during the attack and detailed his role that night."
She continued:
After our report aired, questions arose about whether his account was true, when an incident report surfaced. It told a different story about what he did the night of the attack. Davies denied having anything to do with that incident report and insisted the story he told us was not only accurate, it was the same story he told the FBI when they interviewed him.On Thursday night, when we discovered the account he gave the FBI was different than what he told us, we realized we had been misled, and it was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry. The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and the truth is, we made a mistake.
The apology was not well received. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote on Twitter, "Two outstanding features of the @60Minutes correction: written in the passive voice, edits out the role played by other news organizations."
Also on Twitter, New York magazine writer Frank Rich observed, "Failure of @CBSNews to report how Lara Logan was duped for 'a year' (her claim) by a Benghazi hoax guarantees others will do it for them."
Former Meet the Press host Marvin Kalb wrote at Politico, "CBS News remains an immensely important resource, but it has now suffered an avoidable setback at a time when all of the media is under a cloud of doubt and suspicion. The network must regain the credibility it lost in Benghazi."
After several days of heavy criticism, CBS announced it was conducting a "journalistic review" of the report. The network gave a statement to McClatchy News that implied the investigation had begun immediately after criticism of the story arose, despite having previously declared it would make no further statements on the matter, and previously stating no such investigation was taking place.
This investigation was not "independent" of CBS. Al Ortiz, executive producer for special events at CBS News, was appointed to head the investigation. Dylan Byers of Politico pointed out the problem with this review: Ortiz is "tasked with conducting an investigation of his own boss, Jeff Fager. Fager is both the executive producer of '60 Minutes' and the chairman of CBS News, which means that any dirt Ortiz digs up on '60 Minutes' reporting will reflect back on the man who pays his check."
Alicia Shepard, former ombudsman at NPR told Joe Strupp of Media Matters, "There's no way that Al Ortiz can do an investigation that anyone outside CBS News, and maybe inside, will find credible at this point." Shepard continued, "The network needs to hire a panel of outside independent journalists and let them loose inside 60 Minutes to find out step by step what happened. And be totally transparent. It's the only way for 60 Minutes to regain its once-stellar reputation. This is so why news organizations still need ombudsmen."
In 2004, following a 60 Minutes story that questioned George W. Bush's service in the National Guard, whose reporting was based in part on forged documents, CBS fired four producers, effectively ended the storied career of anchor Dan Rather, and canceled the 60 Minutes II franchise on which the segment aired.
Ultimately the pressure grew too great. Two days before Thanksgiving, Jeff Fager sent an email announcing the results of Ortiz's investigation and informing CBS staff that "I have asked Lara Logan, who has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm's way many times in the course of covering stories for us, to take a leave of absence, which she has agreed to do." Additionally Fager "asked the same of producer Max McClellan, who also has a distinguished career at CBS News."
Acknowledging the story was a "regrettable mistake" Fager wrote "when faced with a such an error, we must use it as an opportunity to make our broadcast even stronger."
While clearly CBS was trying to put their Benghazi Hoax behind them, many questions were still left unanswered about the report including:
- How did 60 Minutes find Dylan Davies?
- Was there an agreement with Threshold to promote his book in the lead up to its release?
- Al Ortiz's review does not address the role of senior CBS executives including network Chairman and 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager in the airing of the Benghazi piece. What was the role of Fager and other executives in vetting/approving the segment?
- How long are Logan and McClellan on leave for?
- Ortiz's review repeatedly mentions that a "team" was involved in producing the segment but names no one except Logan and McClellan. Who else was involved in reporting the story? Who reviewed and approved the final draft? Did anyone at any time raise questions about the quality of the reporting?
Until these and other questions are answered CBS will not have moved past its role in perpetuating the Benghazi Hoax.
Why The GOP's Attempt To Rebrand On Women's Issues Is Doomed
HANNAH GROCH-BEGLEY
GOP candidates are training to better talk about women and women's issues following the disastrous 2012 elections -- but this new rebranding effort will be difficult, given conservative media's toxic rhetoric on women.
Politico reported on December 5 that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is meeting with congressional Republicans and their aides to "teach them what to say -- or not to say -- on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman":
While GOP party leaders have talked repeatedly of trying to "rebrand" the party after the 2012 election losses, the latest effort shows they're not entirely confident the job is done.So they're getting out in front of the next campaign season, heading off gaffes before they're ever uttered and risk repeating the 2012 season, when a handful of comments let Democrats paint the entire Republican Party as anti-woman.Akin dropped the phrase "legitimate rape" during the 2012 Missouri Senate race, costing himself a good shot at winning his own race and touching off Democratic charges of a GOP "War on Women" that dogged Republicans in campaigns across the country.
This new phase in the GOP's attempt to rebrand the party comes months after the Republican National Committee's (RNC) March 18 post-mortem of the 2012 election, which warned the party was "increasingly marginalizing itself" by alienating women, Hispanics, African Americans, and younger voters.
As Media Matters noted at the time, the rebranding effort always faced a significant obstacle: conservative media. Right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh played a significant role in popularizing the very brand of Republican politics the party leadership now understands is toxic -- and they are unlikely to change their rhetoric on women just because the RNC and NRCC suggest it.
After all, Limbaugh is the man who launched 46 personal attacks on Sandra Fluke in 2012, including calling her a "slut" and a "prostitute" for testifying in favor of affordable contraception, and little has changed since then. Just in the month of November, Limbaugh compared filibuster reform in the Senate to "allow[ing] women to be raped"; suggested that women in the military synchronize their menstrual cycles so they'd be "ready to be banshees"; read from a misogynistic parody site mocking marital rape; claimed ads promoting Obamacare's coverage of birth control told young women "if you like being a prostitute, then have at it"; and claimed Democrats are turning women "into nothing but abortion machines."
Limbaugh is not alone. Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto has mocked efforts to combat the immense problem of sexual assault in the military, and claimed "female sexual freedom" led to a "war on men." Fox News' Bill O'Reilly attempted to tie the "War on Christmas" to "unfettered abortion." Conservative blogger and Fox contributor Erick Erickson has called Texas Gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis "abortion Barbie" and attempted to smear her campaign by suggesting she was mentally unfit for office. And a Fox Business host recently asked if there is "something about the female brain that is a deterrent" to women working as tech executives.
That's just a few of the most recent examples. The list goes on.
If the NRCC is concerned about Republicans being labeled "anti-women," Todd Akin and his "legitimate rape" comments are perhaps the least of their concerns. Conservative media's daily drumbeat of demeaning attacks on women could do more damage to the party's efforts than any single gaffe.
After all, the GOP rebranding effort also included a call for greater Latino outreach, to which conservative media responded with increased anti-immigrant demagoguery and a full-throated effort to destroy immigration reform. At the moment, it seems the conservative media is successfully thwarting the Republican "rebrand" -- leaving the GOP right back where they were in November 2012.
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