ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post All Skip RNC's Lawsuit Against the IRS's 'Stonewalling'
On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against the IRS for that agency’s “illegal stonewalling” of the RNC’s request of documents related to the targeting of conservative groups.
So far there hasn’t been one second of airtime on ABC, CBS, NBC’s Tuesday evening shows or Wednesday morning shows. The New York Times and Washington Post also have yet to devote even a sentence to RNC’s lawsuit in their print editions.
“We’re filing this suit because the Obama administration has a responsibility to be transparent and accountable to the American people. The IRS has a legal obligation to answer our inquiry for these records,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “If the IRS and the Obama administration don't have anything to hide, why not answer the request?”
The refusal of these major media outlets to cover the RNC’s lawsuit comes on the heels of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks’ astonishing blackout of major developments in the IRS-Tea Party scandal last week:
■ The House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer former IRS official Lois Lerner for criminal charges.
■ E-mails proved Lerner fed tax information to Cummings’s office about voter fraud prevention group True the Vote.
■ E-mails showed Lerner talked about taking a job with Barack Obama’s advocacy group Organizing for Action - while she was investigating non-profit applicants.
■ A Dallas IRS office
was found to be covered with Vote for Obama stickers and engaged in
campaign cheerleading. An IRS employee in Kentucky was suspended because
he told a taxpayer that Republicans were “going to take women back 40
years...if you vote for a Republican, the rich are going to get richer
and the poor are going to get poorer.”
■ A new report
confirmed Tea Party groups were targeted 100 percent of the time and
that subsequent attempts to make the review seem more neutral, by adding
some liberal groups that were looked at, were merely cosmetic changes.
Yet, not one second of ABC or NBC airtime was devoted to any of these major developments. In fact only CBS, in a 90 second story on Thursday’s This Morning, covered the Lerner criminal referral and charges of IRS offices campaigning for Obama. Neither CBS, nor any of the other network evening or morning shows covered the other revelations.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.
