CNN Hasn't Covered IRS Scandal for Eleven Days
CNN hasn't covered developments in the IRS targeting scandal for eleven days, since correspondent Dana Bash claimed on July 25 there was "no
evidence" the White House was involved.
State of the Union host Candy Crowley briefly mentioned the
scandal on her July 28 show but said nothing of any new developments. In
the last week, National Review reported
e-mails that "suggest collusion" between IRS official Lois Lerner and
an attorney for the Federal Election Commission to investigate a
conservative group. CNN said nothing of the report.
Other developments in the last week include a House GOP claim picked up by NPR that less than half of conservative groups received tax-exempt status approval while all "progressive" groups were approved, even if they showed up on the "Be on the Lookout" (BOLO) lists.
CNN.com did run a story on August 2 on a congressional hearing, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) accused the IRS of "slow rolling" the investigation into the agency. CNN made no mention of the hearing in its news coverage on that Friday, however.
CNN isn't even talking about the new claims by Republicans of foul
play. However, when news broke that was "favorable" to the IRS
narrative, CNN was all over it
and took almost a day to provide the Republican response. When the
inspector general responded that the Tea Party groups were still
scrutinized more heavily, CNN was mum.
Correspondent Dana Bash has multiple times insisted that no proof links
the White House with the scandal, but CNN still has not followed up on
any developments in the story since then. Bash called a July 18
congressional hearing on the matter a "partisan slugfest"
while ignoring a claim that surfaced in the hearing that IRS workers
were ordered to send Tea Party applications to the office of the chief
counsel.
She later addressed the "bombshell," reported by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal,
but insisted that there was still "no evidence" the chief counsel
himself was involved in reviewing the Tea Party applications.
