The censorship of the IRS scandal by ABC, CBS and NBC has reached a new low. Not even the news of Lois Lerner’s retirement, the official at the center of the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, could break the Big Three networks’ months-long streak of no scandal coverage. The Drudge Report splashed the news on the top of its site on Monday but not a single network bothered to report the stunning news that night or Tuesday morning that Lerner, as the Washington Times [1] reported, “retired from the agency Monday morning after an internal investigation found she was guilty of ‘neglect of duties’ and was going to call for her ouster, according to congressional staff.”
This is just the latest in a long line [2] of IRS scandal developments that the Big Three networks have refused to cover. In fact they’ve just stopped covering the scandal completely. It’s been a whopping 90 days since ABC last mentioned the story back on June 26. NBC hasn’t touched the controversy in 89 days and CBS last ran an IRS scandal story 61 days ago on July 24.
While none of the Big Three evening news show reported on the Lerner retirement here are some of the news items they did find time to highlight:
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley highlighted the popularity of the new iPhone.
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams hyped the big winners on Sunday night’s Emmy Awards.
ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer notified its viewers that Mick Jagger was about to be come a great grandfather.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter. [3]