Not surprisingly, there has been yet another revelation in the unfolding of the James Rosen investigation scandal. On Tuesday, it was discovered that Attorney General Eric Holder went “judge shopping” to find someone who would sign off on a subpoena of Fox News Correspondent James Rosen’s personal records. Apparently, Holder went to three different federal judges before he found one that would agree to sign the subpoena without telling Rosen or Fox News.
However, the only morning show coverage of this important development in this scandal was found on the Fox and Friends; no other network or cable show devoted a sentence to educate the public about this discovery.
Fox & Friends cohost Gretchen Carlson believes that this is “the most egregious part of this story thus far” because the exposure of these new facts show that Holder went to a great deal of trouble and did “a lot of deliberate work to go … to three judges” in order to find one to sign the subpoena. [Listen to the audio here]
Additionally, on Tuesday afternoon news broke that the House Judiciary Committee was investigating whether or not Holder had committed perjury by lying about his involvement in the subpoenaing of Rosen’s personal emails and phone records while under oath in his Congressional hearing May 15. Holder claimed to have no involvement in the matter, but it was later revealed that he had personally signed off on the decision to investigate Rosen.
Fox News devoted 20 minutes of its morning show Fox &Friends to cover this significant development in this scandal that has attempted to criminalize journalism, while two of the other three networks did not cover this story at all Wednesday morning. CBS was the only other network to report on it at all; however, they only deemed it worthy of two minutes of coverage on CBS This Morning.
These were stories that were widely available to all the news networks. They were not private and exclusive reports by Fox News to which the other networks did not have access. So why then, besides their vested corporate interest in defending their own, was Fox the only network to devote significant time to these discoveries? It was because the other networks have such strong liberal leanings.
The other news networks committed what is known as bias by omission. By devoting very little coverage to the Holder perjury story and no coverage at all to the “judge shopping” revelation, the liberal media lay bare their political tendencies
This practice is just as unacceptable as a network reporting the news with an overtly liberal spin. By failing to report news that might damage the left-wing political agenda, the mainstream media misleads its viewers into believing that such occurrences did not even take place. This practice must be eliminated from the news media in order to properly and truthfully educate the public about what is happening in their country and around the world, which is what news is supposed to do, but sadly, not what it usually does.
For reference, the transcript of the Fox & Friends discussion of Holder's “judge shopping” is provided below:
May 29, 2013
6:10 a.m. Eastern
GRETCHEN CARLSON: I think this may be the most egregious thing that comes out of this case so far today, which is it's now becoming apparent that possibly Eric Holder was judge shopping, so to speak. So, he had to go to a judge to get a subpoena to be able to look into James Rosen's personal e-mails, his phone calls, etc., who he was talking to. Now, it turns outs that apparently he went to not one but two, no three judges on a shopping spree to find a judge that would actually say, let's not tell James Rosen that we're doing this. Let's not tell Fox News or News Corps that we're doing this, and I find that to be the most egregious part of this story thus far.
STEVE DOOCY: The first two judges said, no, we can't do that. You're prosecuting journalism. Eventually, Judge Royce Lamberth overturned the first two judges and away we went.
CARLSON: That is a lot of deliberate work to go from one judge to two judges to three judges and then for Eric Holder to get under oath and say he's never done this and never had anything to do with this. To me that is one of the most important points of this story thus far.
7:07 a.m. Eastern
CARLSON: Apparently Eric Holder was judge shopping to get this whole thing to happen where he could investigate James Rosen who works for Fox News and the dealings he was having at the State Department. Why did he have to judge shop? Because let's look at the three judges. The first two said, no, we're not going to let this happen. We’re not going to let you subpoena and not tell James Rosen that you're looking into his personal e-mails and his personal phone records and listening possibly into his phone calls. Judge Alan Kay denied it. Judge John Facciola - I hope I pronounced that right - denied it, and it finally went to Royce Lamberth, who did approve it. So look guys, this was not just, hey I’ll see if, you know, this is on a whim; I am going to go to a judge and see what happens. This took a lot of work. It took a lot of work and effort to get to three judges who finally the third judge said yes.
DOOCY: Sometimes that's the way Washington works.
BRIAN KILMEADE: It's a lot of work that he said he didn't know or do and didn’t know about. So why not investigate it? So, the person who can makes heads or tails of this, to find out really what happened, is the man that was a part of it, who signed off on it, talked about it but, doesn't remember it? Perfect.
DOOCY: Perfect indeed.
