On Friday morning, Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney brought on MRC president Brent Bozell to discuss the overnight TV coverage of the big Benghazi hearing with Hillary Clinton. Varney began with examples of headline bias:
Huffington Post: “CLINTON VS. THE CLOWNS”
Salon: “Gowdy destroys his own hearing”
MSNBC.com: “Clinton keeps calm”
Meet the Press tweet: “Clinton jabs congressman with book offer at hearing.”
Here’s how Bozell summed it up:
BRENT BOZELL: It’s not how they covered it, Stuart, as much as what they covered. They covered the performance. They didn’t cover the – the overwhelming amount of the coverage had nothing to do with the substance of the hearings. Didn’t you find it a little bit odd that every time Republicans grilled her, this was Hillary. [Bored face with hand on chin] She did this. And the moment Democrats talked to her, she did this. [Same thing.] Back and forth she went.
Bozell said Hillary did pretty well as a “Clintonian performance,” but asked where was the coverage of the substance?
BOZELL You saw on one report, on ABC News, just the mention of the fact that Jim Jordan had uncovered the e-mail that shows unequivocally that Hillary Clinton lied to the American people! And she’s been lying about her denial about the video! Where she was sending a video – sending an email to her family the night of Benghazi, telling them it was a terrorist attack.
When Varney asked for a confirmation that only ABC covered Jordan on Thursday night, Bozell agreed and laid out how CBS handled it by contrast.
BOZELL: On CBS, Scott Pelley asked John Dickerson if there had been any revelations. John Dickerson’s answer was “No, not so far, there haven’t been.” Interestingly enough, CBS This Morning brought it on, talked about the Jim Jordan thing, but at the end of it, Dickerson came on again, and again said “but there are no revelations.” Of course there was a revelation! The Secretary of State lied to the American people, and has been lying consistently about the lie.
