Former White House press secretary Air Fleischer is pissed the media is ignoring a scoop the media broke.
A story linking the White House to a delay in an investigation over Secret Service shenanigans in Colombia in 2012, which was broken by the Washington Post last night, was talked about plenty on Fox News and MSNBC Thursday morning. But Fleischer thought his former network CNN was engaged in some serious scoop-burying:
CNN "top stories" at 9:30: PA shooting. Adrian Peterson. Markets. Isis. WH cover up of investigation of a donor's son isn't "top news".
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 9, 2014
CNN other stories: Ebola. Police Killing of Black Teen. Still nothing since 9:30 on WP scoop.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 9, 2014
(Note that this may also function as Fleischer’s counter to Jay Carney’s fact-checking of him yesterday; perhaps he feels CNN, which employed him as a contributor until last year, has become the landing spot for Obama spokespeople now.)
CNN anchors soon began responding that they in fact had covered the story (true; “New Bombshell Allegations about Colombia Trip” ran at 9:06). Not good enough for Fleischer, who apparently wanted it to get the MH370 treatment:
@JohnBerman Thanks 4the update. But it's odd 2turn on the TV at 9:30 & hear "top stories" doesn't include WP scoop. Why at 11, not 10 too?
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 9, 2014
@brianstelter Ebola/ISIS are stories at top and bottom of the hour. P.1 WP scoop is not. I can't help but imagine if this broke under Bush.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 9, 2014
@AriFleischer you don't need me to list all the reasons why that might be. lack of independent sourcing, choice to go "heavy" on Ebola, etc
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 9, 2014
Isn’t there some single news source that could decide for the rest of us what does and does not count as a major story? Could it be phrased as “taking” or “winning” a certain time period? Here we go:
@brianstelter @AriFleischer Ari's point is you don't need sourcing for "top news." It's clearly a "top story" this AM, as Playbook said.
— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) October 9, 2014
[Image via screengrab]
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