Fox News Doesn't Care About The "Bloody Senate Report"

OLIVIA KITTEL/Media Matters For America:

"I don't care about the bloody report!"

With that, Bill O'Reilly delivered the climax to a night of Senate report denialism on Fox News.   

This week, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the results of its investigation into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi. The report dispelled many of Fox News' favorite conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks, including the myth that the Obama administration engaged in a cover-up by suggesting the attacks may have grown out of protests outside U.S. facilities in Benghazi over an anti-Islam video, an idea then-U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice suggested in a series of interviews on the broadcast Sunday shows three days after the attacks.

And yet, Fox hosts Bill O'Reilly and Bret Baier continued to push these myths, even when covering the Senate report that debunked them.

On the January 16 edition of Special Report, guest A.B. Stoddard pointed out that the report found no evidence of a cover-up, and Baier responded, "You said no cover-up, but there's clearly an open question about this story about the protests, and about where that all came from."

Bill O'Reilly went even further, peppering guest James Carville with questions about the origins of Rice's suggestion that the attacks may have originated from a protest over the film. Carville attempted to explain that the Senate report answered O'Reilly's question, but the Fox host repeatedly interrupted him, finally yelling, "I don't care about the bloody report":

The Senate report makes clear where reports of a protest were born -- from the intelligence community. The report noted that the intelligence community (IC) received and disseminated an account in the immediate aftermath of the assault that there had been protests against the anti-Islam video at the diplomatic facility prior to the attack, based largely on press accounts that made that claim. The report also revealed that it took days for eyewitness statements by U.S. personnel indicating that there had been no protests to make their way into CIA assessments -- this information was not reviewed or disseminated until after Rice's statements.

What's more, the Senate's findings specifically dismissed the notion of a cover-up, stating:

The Majority concludes that the interagency coordination process on the talking points followed normal, but rushed coordination procedures and that there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to "cover-up" facts or make alterations for political purposes.

Fox News' heavy coverage of the Senate report has consistently ignored the facts in the report in order to smear the administration's response.