On Wednesday evening, ABC and CBS moved on from the latest break in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal as it was revealed that the FBI has been able to recover an unknown number of previously deleted personal and work e-mails from Clinton’s private e-mail server from when she was secretary of state.
Partnered with that was a second omission on Wednesday as the CBS Evening News completely ignored the 2016 presidential campaign to instead give a full segment to the five-year-old girl from California who met Pope Francis to express concern for her illegal immigrant parents.
In contrast, NBC Nightly News devoted one minute and six seconds to the growing scandal with anchor Lester Holt declaring that there’s now “yet another chapter tonight in what seems like the never-ending story of her e-mails.”
Reporting from the Washington bureau, Clinton campaign correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell lamented that the revelation came “[j]ust when Hillary Clinton was trying to get out from under the e-mail controversy” after she “turned over the server to the FBI last month after the FBI started investigating how classified information was handled on her private account.”
Predicting that the recovery of deleted e-mails “this will continue to be a drip, drip, drip from the issue,” Mitchell mentioned the latest national poll on the Democratic presidential field:
[A] new poll today has Joe Biden, who has yet to decide if he’s even running, and Bernie Sanders closing in on Clinton. Clinton is at 33 percent, Biden at 25 percent, Sanders at 24 percent. Biden advisers say he will likely make a decision in time to be on the stage for the first Democratic debate next month.
On the 2016 campaign, ABC’s World News Tonight and correspondent Tom Llamas told viewers about Donald Trump’s decision to boycott Fox News and his targeting Wednesday of fellow GOP candidate Carly Fiorina amid her continued rise in the polls since September 16's debate.
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Also filing a piece on the 2016 election, NBC News Trump correspondent Katy Tur harped on Trump and the topic of birtherism concerning President Obama and Trump’s blasting of Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in South Carolina over claims that she’s responsible for kickstarting the (now proven false) rumors in 2008.
Instead of reserving time for either one of these stories, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley had a fawning one-minute-and-48-second piece on five-year-old Sophie Cruz, who snuck past security lines onto the street by Pope Francis to “put a new face on the debate over immigration reform” after 11-year-old Jersey Vargas did the same when visiting the Vatican last year to advocate for amnesty.
While ABC and NBC also covered Cruz, neither one was as enthralled and committed to using her story to advance the cause of illegal immigration as CBS and Pelley were on Wednesday during the coverage of the Pope’s visit.
The transcript of the segment from September 23's NBC Nightly News can be found below.
NBC Nightly News
September 23, 2015
7:11 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: Emails Recovered]
LESTER HOLT: And for Hillary Clinton, yet another chapter tonight in what seems the never ending story of her e-mails. It turns out the FBI has recovered deleted personal and work e-mails from her private computer server. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has been following this story for us. Andrea.
ANDREA MITCHELL: That’s right, Lester. Just when Hillary Clinton was trying to get out from under the e-mail controversy, new reports today that the FBI has been able to recover some of the deleted e-mails, both personal and work-related from the private service. Clinton turned over the server to the FBI last month after the FBI started investigating how classified information was handled on her private account. The recovery of her additional e-mails ensures this will continue to be a drip, drip, drip from the issue and a new poll today has Joe Biden, who has yet to decide if he’s even running, and Bernie Sanders closing in on Clinton. Clinton is at 33 percent, Biden at 25 percent, Sanders at 24 percent. Biden advisers say he will likely make a decision in time to be on the stage for the first Democratic debate next month.
HOLT: Alright, Andrea, thank you.
