If Attorney General Eric Holder’s goal was to minimize broadcast
network news coverage when he chose late Friday evening to announce a
criminal investigation into how national security secrets were released
to the New York Times, the media have certainly played along.
Holder announced the investigation after the East Coast feeds of Friday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. While each of the networks included some discussion on their Saturday and Sunday broadcasts, including ABC’s This Week and CBS’s Face the Nation (NBC’s Meet the Press was pre-empted by tennis), by Monday the networks had already lost interest.
Monday night, none of the Big Three bothered to tell viewers who might have missed news of the investigation over the weekend; only NBC’s Today raised the topic on Monday morning (a segment in which, as NewsBusters’ Kyle Drennen caught, MSNBC host Chris Hayes claimed “we need more leaks and not less.”) And on Tuesday, only CBS This Morning included the news in their political coverage, a round-up report from White House correspondent Norah O’Donnell.
That’s a far cry from how the networks hyperventilated in late September 2003 when the Justice Department announced a criminal probe into the identity of the “two senior administration officials” who told the late columnist Robert Novak the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame. As MRC’s Brent Baker recounted at the time, ABC, CBS and NBC all led their broadcasts with the story for several nights in a row, with commentary that fueled the notion that this was a case of partisan White House operatives who were putting politics ahead of national security.
Holder announced the investigation after the East Coast feeds of Friday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. While each of the networks included some discussion on their Saturday and Sunday broadcasts, including ABC’s This Week and CBS’s Face the Nation (NBC’s Meet the Press was pre-empted by tennis), by Monday the networks had already lost interest.
Monday night, none of the Big Three bothered to tell viewers who might have missed news of the investigation over the weekend; only NBC’s Today raised the topic on Monday morning (a segment in which, as NewsBusters’ Kyle Drennen caught, MSNBC host Chris Hayes claimed “we need more leaks and not less.”) And on Tuesday, only CBS This Morning included the news in their political coverage, a round-up report from White House correspondent Norah O’Donnell.
That’s a far cry from how the networks hyperventilated in late September 2003 when the Justice Department announced a criminal probe into the identity of the “two senior administration officials” who told the late columnist Robert Novak the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame. As MRC’s Brent Baker recounted at the time, ABC, CBS and NBC all led their broadcasts with the story for several nights in a row, with commentary that fueled the notion that this was a case of partisan White House operatives who were putting politics ahead of national security.
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