Both Benghazi And The Petraeus Scandal Suggest US Media Is Way Too Cozy With The State

Business Insider
Geoffrey Ingersoll

If there is just one lesson to take away from the Benghazi and Petraeus affairs it's that the American media is way too cozy with heads of state.

Immediately following the Benghazi crisis, U.S. gersollmedia did its due diligence and flexed its sources, anonymous and otherwise, to uncover the truth about the attack — but then they purposely failed to report the details because of requests from the CIA and the Obama administration.

Michael Calderon of The Huffington Post reports that the AP, The New York Times and The Washington Post all withheld information at the behest of the CIA. Calderon also details how other news outlets failed to mention the true ties of CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

From his report:

ABC News, for example, reported that Doherty had been working to "round up dangerous weapons" in the country. One national security reporter told The Huffington Post that it was an "open secret" in national security circles that the former SEALs were working for the CIA.

The AP even went so far as to edit a Sept. 21 story it wrote, which revealed the employment status of Woods and Doherty; ensuring the edited version made no mention of Woods and Doherty's employment the CIA.

A statement written to HuffPo from AP spokesman Paul Colford:

"We omitted mention of the two former SEALs' CIA connection in subsequent versions of the story after CIA officials insisted that other lives would be endangered."

Another statement, from the New York Times, echoed this sentiment: "[We] agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in dangerous settings."