The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to cover on Tuesday night a new chapter in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal concerning the reason she turned over her work-related e-mails while CBS also neglected to tell their viewers that Clinton finally came out against the Keystone XL oil pipeline after pressure from liberals and environmentalists.
Concerning her e-mails, The Washington Post learned late Tuesday from State Department sources “that undercuts Clinton’s characterization” of how she decided to surrender thousands of work-related e-mails to the State Department as “the request was not simply about general record-keeping but was prompted entirely by the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail system.”
Reporters Carol Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman added that the State Department first reached out to Clinton “in the summer of 2014, at least three months before the agency asked Clinton and three of her predecessors to provide their e-mails.”
As for Keystone, the CBS Evening News ignored Clinton’s long-delayed announcement to instead preview anchor Scott Pelley’s heated interview with Donald Trump for 60 Minutes and raised concerns about Republican candidate Carly Fiorina having a sufficient campaign infrastructure to contend for the Republican nomination.
In a 21-second brief on ABC’s World News Tonight, anchor David Muir reported that Clinton argued “the project will not help in the fight against climate change” with the Obama administration still officially undecided on the pipeline that would run from Canada to Nebraska.
Over on NBC Nightly News, a one-minute-and-53-second report was devoted to Clinton’s opposition to the massive project with anchor Lester Holt noting that Clinton made her decision to “wad[e] into a very hot button issue” at the same time that “the country's attention was focused on Pope Francis' touching down in the U.S.”
Remarking that it “already has Republicans pouncing,” Holt handed off to Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, who brought up the pressure Clinton was under to oppose the proposed pipeline by groups and individuals ranging from socialist and Democratic presidential opponent Bernie Sanders to environmentalists.
To Todd’s credit, he mentioned that it was Clinton who “began the environmental review process on the final 1,200 miles of the pipeline, as secretary of state” plus “it was widely assumed she was okay with approving this pipeline” while she ran the State Department.
Nonetheless, he tried to throw cold water on those backing the pipeline:
Critics on the right who support the pipeline say it will create jobs and help drive down oil prices...The State Department estimates construction would support about 42,000 temporary jobs, but once operational, it would support 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.
After the networks evening newscasts, word came out via Bloomberg that the FBI has recovered an unknown number of Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mails from her server. The exit question that this writer has is this: Will the Wednesday morning newscasts cover the Clinton scandal considering two big developments on Tuesday?
