Fox News Runs Veritable Anti-Obama Propaganda Film As ‘Investigation’ Into Benghazi
On the eve of the final presidential debate of a closely-knotted race for the White House, a debate whose topic will be foreign policy, Fox News Channel aired an hour-long special that dressed itself as a news report on the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, but its title, “Special Report Investigates: Death and Deceit in Benghazi,” revealed what it effectively was, an assist to Republican nominee Mitt Romney‘s bid for the presidency. This alone would not be cause for concern, but this “investigation” wasn’t hosted by the likes of Sean Hannity, but rather, by “hard news” anchor Bret Baier.
With the final presidential debate scheduled for Monday night on the subject of foreign policy, even as reporting emerges that corroborates the administration’s early assessment of the terrorist attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11 of this year as a reaction to the film Innocence of Muslims,” this Fox News “investigation,” featuring “expert” “analysis” by folks like former Bush administration officials John Bolton and Dana Perino, set out a naked, partisan agenda: to push the idea (repeated by Baier throughout the program) that this election is no longer really about the economy, but now about the attack on Benghazi, and that the Obama administration tried to conceal the fact that this was a terrorist attack. Rather than itemize all of the omissions, misrepresentations, and biases crammed into this 60-minute hit job, let’s just focus on two examples that capably represent what Baier and co. were up to.
First up, the popular-with-Romney-water-carriers distortion that President Obama wasn’t referring to the attack in Benghazi when he referenced “acts of terror” during his Rose Garden remarks on Sept. 12. This is actually a fallback position, created to paper over their first-string distortion that “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror,” which was exploded by President Obama and Candy Crowley at last week’s debate.
Since the President specifically referenced the Benghazi attack in the very paragraph that conservatives claim demonstrates he wasn’t talking about Benghazi, it’s beyond a tough claim to justify. The only way openly partisan conservatives can make that claim is by not directly quoting the President, which isn’t a trick that a respected news organization, or a respected journalist like Bret Baier, should play:
Fox News clearly had video of the President’s remarks, yet in this “investigative hour” they chose not to play that portion, a choice that suggests an agenda beyond journalistic “investigation,” and a method that should be out of bounds. They did play the part where he urges tolerance for Islam, which shows that they know their audience.
For the record, the President not only called Benghazi an “act of terror” in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, he did it the following day, in a Nevada campaign speech:
As for the ones we lost last night: I want to assure you, we will bring their killers to justice. (Applause.) And we want to send a message all around the world — anybody who would do us harm: No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world, and no act of violence will shake the resolve of the United States of America.
So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. (Applause.) I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world. No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America. (Applause.)
In fact, even Fox’s own special featured a clip of President Obama telling David Letterman, within a week of the attack, that it was the work of “extremists and terrorists.” This program’s narrative (also the Mitt Romney narrative) depends on the logical fallacy that an “act of terror” (in a country awash in weaponry) can’t also be an opportunistic reaction to something like that anti-Islam video, a fallacy that reporting from Benghazi is beginning to expose.
That bit of trickery with the Rose Garden speech is nothing compared with what Bret Baier and company did to debate moderator Candy Crowley. After Mitt Romney badly embarrassed himself last Tuesday night by falsely claiming that “”it took the President 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror,” conservatives seized on a post-debate remark by Crowley to falsely insist that Romney hadn’t been wrong, and that Crowley had “walked back” her real-time fact check of him. That’s a notion that Crowley rejected outright, pointing out that her post-debate remarks were no different than what she said onstage. Romney was wrong about what the President said, but Crowley threw him a lifeline by pointing out that an earlier point he had made, that the administration continued to reference the anti-Islam video for “two weeks or so,” was essentially correct.
It’s one thing for openly partisan commentators to willfully misrepresent what Candy Crowley said, but no reputable journalist should try that, especially given that there’s video of Candy Crowley saying she never walked anything back.
After setting up the debate clip of Crowley fact-checking Mitt Romney at Tuesday’s debate, Baier says “Only after the debate does Crowley admit that maybe she was the one with her facts wrong.”
What? Wait, so how does Bret Baier, hard news reporter and anchor, substantiate this? Does he play a clip of Crowley’s “admission,” or even a transcript? Does he report and let you decide? No, he uses a much more reliable source. Since you won’t believe it unless you see it with your own eyes, here’s what Baier did:
That’s right, instead of directly quoting Candy Crowley, Brett Baier sources partisan commentator Charles Krauthammer to distort what Candy Crowley said. What’s surprising here isn’t that Krauthammer said it, it’s that Bret Baier, whom I truly believe is a well-respected journalist among his peers, sells it harder than Krauthammer does.
That’s what is wrong with this entire program, the way this propaganda piece is dressed up as hard news, in clothing that I fear Bret Baier has mortgaged his reputation to buy. There are many excellent journalists who work at Fox News, and they rely on the thin wall between opinion and news to protect their reputations. This would have been better left to Sean Hannity who is open and honest about his political leanings and who will never have to worry about escaping the conservative media orbit without his journalistic reputation burning up on reentry.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
