Mainstream media coverage of the Benghazi cover-up

Mainstream media coverage of the cover-up

Are media ignoring the White House's handling of Libya attack?

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," September 28, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Now when it comes to the Benghazi cover-up, the White House did not act alone in trying to hide the truth from you, the American people. That's right. The Obama administration got help from coconspirators in the form of its friends in the liberal main stream media.

Joining me now to help expose this blatant bias, none other than the president of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell. All right, so yesterday, out of the three major networks, only ABC acknowledges that intelligence officials on the ground knew it within 24 hours, only one. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "WORLD NEWS"/ABC, SEPT. 27)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, (voice-over): The White House first suggested that the Benghazi attack was spontaneous, the result of that anti-Muslim video inciting mobs throughout the region.

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Let's be clear, these protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened to --

CARNEY: We certainly don't know. We don't know otherwise. You know, we have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): But sources tell ABC News that intelligence officials on the ground immediately suspected the attack was not tied to the movie at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Really? Well, got one out of three. It wasn't on the front page of many newspapers. Why, Brent?

BRENT BOZELL, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER: Well, think about this. First of all, forget any evidence, just the "I could tell you." There was something very suspicious about the enact a massive demonstration over a video's no one heard of, and who shows up to a demonstration with rocket-propelled grenades?

So they should have scratched their head a little bit and wondered. Now you have the evidence has been confirmed by Newsweek, no friend of the conservative movement, by the way, and by Fox News independently, that within 24 hours intelligence officials had indication of this.

Here's Jay Carney saying, we have no information on this. They absolutely did have information. So when you've that going on, you wonder, where are the press? This happened two weeks ago. Where are the press covering this? Fine, ABC finally did a story. They should have been doing this a week ago.

HANNITY: They arere covering up the death by terrorists of Americans.

BOZELL: Absolutely.

HANNITY: They're covering it up.

BOZELL: Absolutely. CBS News has yet to cover this.

HANNITY: Yes, all right, well, let's look at NBC. They finally did the story, but what did they do? They blamed the intelligence community, you know, for getting it wrong, as if they know better. By the way, it's MSDNC. Go ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "NIGHTLY NEWS"/NBC)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: It's been more than two weeks since the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Tonight, a rare reversal, intelligence officials acknowledge they originally got it wrong. Patience is starting to wear thin with the pace of the investigation and shifting explanations from the administration. Tonight, members of Congress from both parties are demanding answers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Well, they got part of it right.

BOZELL: They couldn't be more shameless, Sean. This is your typical Friday afternoon surprise. Now, we saw this so often with the Clinton administration. Now you're seeing it with the Obama administration.

Come out with a dollop of information that might sound right, but when you look at it very carefully it's not right at all. They're blaming with the people that came up with the evidence that said it was a terrorist attack. They're blaming them for it now.

HANNITY: It's obvious we said -- look, simple questions of this president have never been asked. Mr. President, you said you'd cut the deficit in half in your first term. It went up $6 trillion, you called Bush unpatriotic for $4 trillion in eight years. You know, simple question.

Mr. President, you predicted if we passed your stimulus by now we would have created 8 million new jobs. They still have fewer Americans working.

You know, Mr. President, you said you'd be transparent. Can we see the consulate cables and wires and e-mails today, tomorrow? When can we see them?

BOZELL: How about this, Mr. President, you said you were taking our foreign policy in a different direction. The Middle East is in flames against America and our ambassador is dead. What do you say now? Mr. President, in Sudan they will not allow U.S. Marines to guard American soil. What do you have to say about that?

HANNITY: I mean, Romney has got to understand, they're not going to ask these questions. It's his job to bring it up as of next Wednesday.

All right, here's Andrea Mitchell, "NBC Nightly News," and she says it's Ambassador Rice who was sent out with false information that we now know is false, as corroborated by a scrubbed web sites at the State Department, to lie, as did Jay Carney, as did Secretary Clinton. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "NIGHTLY NEWS"/NBC)

ANDREA MITCHELL: It's very unusual for the intelligence community to make this admission. Politics are clearly in play. The questions being asked are, why did they get it wrong? Was it because there was a cover-up or was it because they were trying to avoid acknowledging mistakes this close to an election?

So there is always the political context. Certainly, the White House today and tonight, very strongly defending Susan Rice, but she is in the crosshairs right now of the political argument, and this is something that is going to be pursued by Republicans who have been hammering away for days, saying that the administration deliberately covered it up, something the White House is strongly denying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: How about this? On the anniversary of 9/11 in Benghazi, a hotbed for terrorist training, that maybe you might want to beef up security. Just a thought.

BOZELL: Susan Rice went on five national television shows and lied. She absolutely lied. We know now that they had information that this was a terrorist attack. She's not caught in crosshairs. She ought to be caught in front of a jury somewhere.

HANNITY: All right, Brent Bozell, thanks for being with us.

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