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NBC's Today Continues Blackout on Fast and Furious Controversy
News Boster.org ^ | June 20, 2012 | Matthew Balan

Posted on 06/20/2012 7:40:21 PM PDT by Kaslin

NBC's Today kept up its complete omission of the Fast and Furious gun-running controversy on Wednesday, even as a House committee prepared to vote later in the day on whether to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. CBS This Morning stood among the Big Three morning newscasts in devoting a full report to the issue. ABC's Good Morning America gave only a 20-second news brief on the controversy.

Overall, NBC has punted on the story since December 2010, when the scandal first emerged. NBC Nightly News had its own blackout on Fast and Furious until June 12, 2012, when correspondent Kelly O'Donnell finally mentioned "Congress's investigation of a failed operation that sent U.S. guns into Mexico" during a 30-second news brief. The issue hasn't been mentioned since on the evening newscast.

NBC's Today kept up its complete omission of the Fast and Furious gun-running controversy on Wednesday, even as a House committee prepared to vote later in the day on whether to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. CBS This Morning stood among the Big Three morning newscasts in devoting a full report to the issue. ABC's Good Morning America gave only a 20-second news brief on the controversy.

Overall, NBC has punted on the story since December 2010, when the scandal first emerged. NBC Nightly News had its own blackout on Fast and Furious until June 12, 2012, when correspondent Kelly O'Donnell finally mentioned "Congress's investigation of a failed operation that sent U.S. guns into Mexico" during a 30-second news brief. The issue hasn't been mentioned since on the evening newscast.

CBS This Morning anchor Erica Hill introduced correspondent Nancy Cordes's report by noting how "a House committee is due to vote today on finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Holder has refused the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's demand for documents from the controversial 'Fast and Furious' gun-running operation." Cordes highlighted during the segment that "Holder says there's no evidence of a cover-up; that he's already provided 7,600 pages worth of documents; that this is, essentially, a Republican fishing expedition."

On Good Morning America, news anchor Josh Elliott gave his sole news brief on Fast and Furious six minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour:

JOSH ELLIOTT: Meanwhile here at home, Attorney General Eric Holder could be charged with contempt of Congress today. A House committee is demanding more documents about the government's Fast and Furious program, a failed sting operation that allowed weapons to get into the hands of Mexican gangs. Holder calls the committee's threat to hold him in contempt pure politics.

The ABC morning actually hasn't been much better than its NBC counterpart, as they've have only given one other news brief on the controversy over the past 18 months.

The full transcript of Nancy Cordes's report from Wednesday's CBS This Morning, which aired 15 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour:

ERICA HILL: On Capitol Hill, a House committee is due to vote today on finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Holder has refused the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's demand for documents from the controversial 'Fast and Furious' gun-running operation, which was first exposed by CBS News. Committee chairman Darrell Issa says a last-minute meeting on Tuesday went nowhere.

[CBS News Graphic: "Holder On The Hot Seat: Attorney General May Face Contempt Vote"]

REP. DARRELL ISSA, (R), CALIFORNIA: It's, ultimately, the attorney general who is the custodian of the documents we wish to receive, and that's why the contempt cites him. We would hope that the President would ask his attorney general to be more cooperative.

CHARLIE ROSE: Nancy Cordes is on Capitol Hill this morning. Nancy, what is happening here?

NANCY CORDES: Well, Charlie, what's happening is the Republicans say that Holder is not giving them the documents they need to investigate whether the Department of Justice covered up its involvement in 'Fast and Furious', or tried to silence whistleblowers, after a U.S. Border agent, Brian Terry, was killed in Arizona, and two guns that had been walked as part of the program were found at the scene.

Attorney General Holder says there's no evidence of a cover-up; that he's already provided 7,600 pages worth of documents; that this is, essentially, a Republican fishing expedition. And so, he had an ultimatum of his own for Issa: I'll give you more documents if you agree to drop the subpoenas against me.

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have to say, given the extraordinary nature of the offer that we made, and given the extraordinary way in which we have shared materials to date, that I think we are actually involved more in political gamesmanship, as opposed to trying to get the information they say they want.

CORDES: So unless someone blinks this morning, this contempt vote is going to go ahead in the committee. If it passes, then it would go to the House floor. If it passes in the House, it would come to the Senate. But the Senate, Charlie and Erica, is controlled by Democrats, so it's likely that the move would die there.

ROSE: Nancy Cordes, thank you so much.



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: 2deadfeds; 300deadmexicans; atf; banglist; brianterry; contempthearing; dea; dhs; doj; ericholder; fastandfurious; fbi; gunrunner; gunwalker; holder; holdercontempt; ice; jaimezapata; lamestreammedia; murdergate; nbc; obama; terry; zapata
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To: what's up; Joe Brower; Travis McGee; marktwain
Your #16 is spot on. Some of us picked up on this aspect from the very beginning and have been screaming it at every opportunity. The MSM has been and still is doing their best to frame it as a "failed sting operation" when it never was.

Further, it's utterly impossible for Maobama not to have given such a massive undertaking his direct blessing. Hopefully he's stupid enough to have left a trail.

The good news is that FINALLY the wheels of justice are beginning to move. There is hope.

21 posted on 06/21/2012 12:01:02 AM PDT by AAABEST (Et lux in tenebris lucet: et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt)
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To: Kaslin

NBC Nightly News Devotes Mere Seconds to First-Ever Mention of Fast and Furious

In the eighteen months since the Operation Fast & Furious investigation began, Brian Williams and NBC Nightly News have never mentioned the Department of Justice's gunwalking controversy. Every single time Mr. Holder has testified or a major development happened, NBC Nightly News ignored it. Tonight, in their first mention of the scandal--ever--NBC Nightly News and Brian Williams distorted Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony.
22 posted on 06/21/2012 1:55:51 AM PDT by Brown Deer (Pray for 0bama. Psalm 109:8)
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To: SkyDancer
Checked your FR page ..... you guys run an air ambulance, yes?

Liked the map of Oz ..... esp. the "sharks with frickin' lasers" -- now that was good for a laugh!

Brisbane -- you guys are in the warm and trade-windy, rainy part of Oz, aren't you? None of that dreaded 10,000-year drought stuff where you are. But you aren't far enough north to start seeing jungly things. Tho' I guess you're eligible for funnel-webs and blue-rings and fer-de-lances and dingoes just about anywhere you go in Oz. At least the abos killed off the marsupial lions for you!

Where were you in the States before you went Down Under?

Think you're gonna stick?

Using atlases and different sorts of enviro maps (rainfall, ambient temps, etc.) I once determined, in a schoolboy way, that SW Australia would be the best-favored weatherwise and every otherwise .... meaning that part of the south coast east of Fremantle, opposite the Archipelago of the Recherche. Ever been there or know anyone who has? Let me down easy .... the archipelago is solid fer-de-lances eating funnel-webs and vice-versa, right? And the shallows are all stingrays and blue-rings, and the great whites come right up into the surf? (Steeling myself for letdown ....)

Another part of the Antipodes I thought might be interesting is Christmas Island, 400 mi. ESE of Christchurch, part of New Zealand, and the farthest-south of all the Polynesian Islands, and actually a temperate-zone island, about, umm, 40o S Latitude iirc. Fairly cool, moist climate, and some unusual weather effects (unique cloud formations). Long, long, nearly-deserted beaches. But has air service and a weekly ship from Kiwiland. Sounds interesting. (I once spent a year on an island while in the Nav .... it's a life one could get used to.)

23 posted on 06/21/2012 3:24:22 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: SkyDancer
It’s nice to be able to watch TV news without so much editorial filtering like in the US.

I'm on broadcast and so don't see FNN, CNN, CNBC, etc. ... what there is, is CCTV, a state-run network out of Peking. Yeah, mainland China. I call it "ChiComTV". I actually watch it, and when I get tired of the Chinese accents trying to talk to Scots or South American accents, I mute the thing and just watch the banner crawls at the bottom and turn the sound up when the talking heads give way to actual news footage that looks promising ...... like the wall-to-wall coverage they did recently on their most recent space shot.

Even with their spin it's hard to miss the menace in their stuff aimed at the Filipinos re the South China Sea reef islets they're arguing over. They want to take some of the Ryukyu Islands, too, and are rubbing the Japanese enough the wrong way that the US Fleet is starting to show up .... denied by both Chicom and US official sources, of course, but -- ahem -- the US is doing a deal to (partly, contingently) reopen some activities at Subic and Clark Field. Now how about that? No coverage Stateside, tho' .... except for the threads here on FR. Disgraceful!

"We're maneuvering toward a general thermonuclear exchange with China, but in political news today, Senator Chuck Schumer said ....."

Feh.

24 posted on 06/21/2012 3:41:23 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: Kaslin

You want it to stick or even register, call it something other than the name of a movie about cars or a video game.

There’s all manner of negative conditioning already in place. Turn it on them. Our own government smuggled guns to Mexican drug cartels and blamed it upon law abiding American citizens, while Border Patrol agents and cuddly undocumented citizens in waiting were killed by the hundreds.

Surely there’s something to work with, there.


25 posted on 06/21/2012 3:43:46 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Kaslin
"CORDES: So unless someone blinks this morning, this contempt vote is going to go ahead in the committee. If it passes, then it would go to the House floor. If it passes in the House, it would come to the Senate. But the Senate, Charlie and Erica, is controlled by Democrats, so it's likely that the move would die there."

I don't think Cordes is correct, It doesn't go to the Senate for a vote.
26 posted on 06/21/2012 3:53:03 AM PDT by jaydubya2
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To: jaydubya2

Well it could very well go to the Senate, but you can be sure Harry Reid will stop it right there. This is why it is important that we not just get the majority in the Senate back on November 6, but get the Super Majority back. Plus adding more seats to the House would also help


27 posted on 06/21/2012 4:06:48 AM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Don Corleone; All
Broadcast licenses are for “public convenience” The licensee must show that they serve the public. These Alphabet networks are not doing that because of their bias. Their license to broadcast should be rescinded.

My working hypothesis is that the "progressive" take over of the main stream media could not have happened without the requirement for licenses. I think that the reform should be to sell off the air space so that it is private property. There is money to be made in giving news without the "progressive" agenda. The MSM makes decisions to put agenda over profit every day.

Consider the whole public broadcasting system aka the propaganda broadcasting system. It is a disgrace to the first amendment that there is a government broadcasting system at all.

28 posted on 06/21/2012 4:14:06 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: Kaslin

ABC’s big “news” brief was: is it really a Democrat cover up or just a Republican witch hunt.


29 posted on 06/21/2012 4:33:05 AM PDT by jersey117
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To: Kaslin

If the House votes to pass that this was a contempt of congress, the case will be assigned to a local US attorney for enforcement. The Senate is not involved. But I agree with you, we need to take the Senate back.


30 posted on 06/21/2012 4:44:02 AM PDT by jaydubya2
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To: Kaslin

I was talking with one of my Brit in-laws a few weeks ago and told him that it’s not so much that the mainstream media lies, it’s that they frequently only tell half the story or none at all. They’re more truth-suppressors than they are bald-faced liars.


31 posted on 06/21/2012 5:01:27 AM PDT by driftless2
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To: gunsequalfreedom
Regardless of what you think of the philosophy of trying to break up the cartels, there isn't a moral equivalancy here.

Only one President lauched the operation apparently with the intent of implicating US gun owners in order to trash the 2nd Amendment. In that process hundreds died and now they are trying to cover up their criminality.

That is now the thing which is being focused on and rightly so.

32 posted on 06/21/2012 10:32:54 AM PDT by what's up
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To: lentulusgracchus
Yes. The RFD provides air ambulance service in our area plus we have an EMT vehicle for local emergencies. Our main mission is to provide emergency service and airlift service to the bush (what Yanks call the outback).

Brisbane is pretty much like San Diego in a way. Cool in winter, rain, but gets bloody hot in summer.

And too, we do have the pesty critters, getting into everything, such as but not included

Photobucket

Sure cure for constipation they are.

I live on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.

Not sure If my contract will be extended. I like it here in Oz, met new friends, new culture. Depends on how work goes in the states, who'll get elected president and how long it'll take to turn things around. If Romney get in I sure hope he won't go and say he inherited the mess from Obama. That'd turn me off real quick.

Been up to New Zealand, over to Tahiti, Bora Bora ... interesting places.

Thanks for your post, Janey

33 posted on 06/21/2012 3:18:22 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Ambition Without Talent Is Sad - Talent Without Ambition Is Worse")
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To: what's up

I simply said both plans were stupid. Band aid approach to solving the problem. Is it your position that we should not seal up the border?


34 posted on 06/21/2012 4:12:04 PM PDT by gunsequalfreedom (Conservative is not a label of convenience. It is a guide to your actions.)
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To: SkyDancer
Is that a funnel-web or just a Damn Big Spider? Checked the "properties" field to see if it was labeled ....

Looks ugly enough!!

35 posted on 06/21/2012 11:52:14 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: lentulusgracchus

Nope, just one Big A** spider. Quite common. The girls air raid alarm goes off and the guys come running. They know what’s happening. The funnel web lives in the ground and pretty much in grass/garden areas. They will come out and attack. Can bite right through trainers.


36 posted on 06/22/2012 6:22:22 AM PDT by SkyDancer ("Ambition Without Talent Is Sad - Talent Without Ambition Is Worse")
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