The news that the House Oversight Committee will vote next week on
whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress,
for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents in the Fast and Furious
investigation, was met with silence from the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS)
network news shows. There was no mention of the Holder hearings on
Monday’s evening news shows or Tuesday’s morning shows.
The blackout of the Holder hearings continues a stunning trend [1].
Since December 2010, when the Fast and Furious scandal first broke,
there have been zero stories about the gunwalking scandal on NBC Nightly News and Today show. On ABC there was only one brief aired on Good Morning America.
Only CBS has truly covered the story, mainly due to the work of one
reporter, Sharyl Attkisson. Since Attkisson broke the gunwalking story,
there have been a total of 30 full stories and 1 brief aired on CBS’s Evening News and This Morning programs.
Curiously, Attkisson’s stories on the gunwalking scandal have screeched to a halt.
From February 4 through this morning’s news there has been only one
report (An Erica Hill brief on the May 3 This Morning) on the Fast and
Furious controversy. It’s not as if Attkisson stopped paying attention,
as she authored a story for CBSNews.com on Tuesday [2], but oddly her reporting did not make the air on that night’s CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.
The following brief, aired on the May 3, 2012 CBS This Morning, represents the sum total of stories by the Big 3 on the Fast and Furious scandal in over a month:
ERICA HILL: There is new information this morning in the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation, first exposed last year by our own Sharyl Attkisson. Sources tell CBS News that today lawmakers will take the first formal step toward charging Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused Holder of obstructing their investigation. In Fast and Furious, U.S. officials allowed thousands of guns to flow from the U.S. into Mexico. Two of those guns were later found at the scene where a U.S. border patrol agent was murdered.