ABC, CBS and NBC Censor Newly Released IRS Scandal E-Mails

The censorship of the IRS scandal by ABC, CBS and NBC continued this week when the Big Three networks refused to report about newly released Lois Lerner emails that severely undercut the IRS’s case that the agency wasn’t politically motivated in its targeting of Tea Party groups. In a February 2011 email, as reported in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Lerner advised her staff that the Tea Party matter was “very dangerous” and insisted that “Cincy should probably not have these cases.”

Two days have passed since these revelatory emails were released and so far none of the Big Three networks have touched them. In fact, they have stopped covering the IRS scandal altogether. It’s been a whopping 79 days since ABC last ran a story, on June 26, on the IRS imbroglio. NBC last mentioned the scandal 78 days ago. CBS had the most recent mention, 50 days ago, on July 24.

On September 11 the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, in an article headlined “Lois Lerner’s Own Words [1],” reported the following: “In a February 2011 email, Ms. Lerner advised her staff — including then Exempt Organizations Technical Manager Michael Seto and then Rulings and Agreements director Holly Paz — that a Tea Party matter is ‘very dangerous,’ and is something ‘Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on.’ Ms. Lerner adds, ‘Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.’”

> Ongoing list of what the media are suppressing, updated daily: “Censored! IRS Scandal Being Buried by Big Three Networks [2]”

That’s a different tune than the IRS sang in May when former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said the agency’s overzealous enforcement was the work of two ‘rogue’ employees in Cincinnati. When the story broke, Ms. Lerner suggested that her office had been unaware of the pattern of targeting until she read about it in the newspaper. ‘So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look,’ she said in May.”

The WSJ Review & Outlook piece went on to note: “Earlier this summer, IRS lawyer Carter Hull, who oversaw the review of many Tea Party cases and questionnaires, testified that his oversight began in April 2010. Tea party cases under review are ‘being supervised by Chip Hull at each step,’ Ms. Paz wrote to Ms. Lerner in a February 2011 email. ‘He reviews info from TPs, correspondence to TPs etc. No decisions are going out of Cincy until we go all the way through the process with the c3 and c4 cases here.’ TP stands for Tea Party, and she means 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.”

-- Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director for the Media Research Center