Book review: Stonewalled, by Sharyl Attkisson

I’ve read thousands of books. Only two have scared me so badly I had trouble sleeping: The Shining by Stephen King, and Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington by former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

Stonewalled reveals an author who is:

☐Bitter

☐Angry

☐Paranoid

☐One of the few honest reporters left in America
þAll of the above

Attkisson is bitter because, as a journalist specializing in blowing the whistle on wrongdoers, she was repeatedly marginalized and ignored by her bosses at CBS News, an organization she contends is a tool of the Obama administration. She became so frustrated at her inability to get stories about corruption at the highest levels of government on the air that she finally resigned the job she had once loved.

She is angry at her fellow journalists, claiming most have become complacent, lazy and dishonest, content to write stories containing talking points that are spoon-fed to them by partisan government spokespeople. Attkisson is one of those old-fashioned reporters who believes journalists have a duty to report all (as opposed to some) of the news and to let the public decide what’s newsworthy and what isn’t, rather than picking and choosing stories that make certain people or parties look good or bad.

Attkisson comes off as paranoid when she claims her computers were hacked and phones were tapped by the government because her reports about Operation Fast and Furious cast the Justice Department in an unfavorable light. She says she knows the administration official who authorized the intrusion. She can’t be sued for libel for revealing the culprit’s name, so why doesn’t she? 

That said, there’s so much solid (and ultimately disturbing) reporting within the pages of Stonewalled that readers can’t help but feel that Attkisson may well be one of the last honest reporters in America. 

She contends the Obama administration, which promised to be the most transparent in modern history, is, in fact, the least, a claim supported by the Society of Professional Journalists that sent Obama a letter objecting to what it called “the politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.” She further asserts Obama’s minions effectively control much of the news and, therefore, the national agenda, through skillful use of propaganda for which the media willingly falls since it is run by a cabal of eastern lefties whose beliefs jive with the president’s. 

Attkisson is credible. She is the reporter who disproved Hillary Clinton’s claim during the 2008 primary season that she and Chelsea had to dodge sniper fire upon landing in Bosnia in 1996. Atkisson, who had accompanied Clinton on that trip, dug into her archives and found footage showing the Clintons leisurely exiting the plane, smiling and posing for pictures, proof that Clinton either lied or stretched the truth for political gain. (NBC anchor Brian Williams was removed from his job for claiming he was exposed to danger in a war zone and has been relegated to reporting “late breaking news” on MSNBC. Clinton may well be our next president. Go figure.)

Among Attkisson’s more sobering observations:

• Congress – both parties – and the White House routinely ignore reporters who ask questions for which truthful answers would put them in uncomfortable positions. Journalists, who once would have shamed them into responding by reporting about their stonewalling, allow them to get away with it for fear of losing access.

• Federal agencies and departments have used our tax dollars to build elaborate spin factories – broadcast studios staffed with hairdressers, make-up artists and wardrobe consultants, to which favored reporters are invited. There they are allowed to "interview" government spokespeople who recite talking points consisting of lies and/or half-truths.

• Administration spinmeisters collaborate with web sites created specifically to counter negative press stories (in the unlikely event one gets published or aired). One such site, Attkisson says, is Media Matters for America, funded in part by Democratic donor George Soros. She says that stories Media Matters publishes are often picked up by other leftist sites such as the Huffington Post and Politico, reaching (and influencing) millions of readers. She points out these sites often question the credibility and/or motivation of journalists who break stories that scrutinize the administration, effectively turning the tables and making the reporters, rather than the perpetrators of the stories they report, into the bad guys. (Check out the Huffington Post. On any given day there are almost as many negative stories about Fox news reporters as there are glowing reports about the Obama administration’s accomplishments. In the spirit of objective journalism, be advised that I, personally, hold Media Matters and Huffington Post, and their right-wing counterparts, Fox News and the Drudge Report, in contempt. All are despicable for the ways they manipulate the news.)

• The Obama administration resorts to out-and-out lies when it fits their purposes. Citing the Benghazi attack, Attkisson reminds us that the White House and/or State Department didn’t want it known they had ignored repeated requests for help from Ambassador Christopher Stevens and so, instead, sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice onto the Sunday talk shows to spin a ludicrous tale blaming a youtube video that insulted Muhammad for the attack that took four American lives.

• The media knew Obama was lying when, during the second 2012 presidential debate, he claimed that, the day after Benghazi, he referred to the attack as a "terrorist" incident, but didn’t hold him accountable because most journalists wanted him to win re-election. CBS had footage of Obama’s entire post-Benghazi speech, proving he never once referred to terror or terrorists, but didn’t release it. Attkisson says that just before the debate, key reporters received calls from White House spin doctors reminding them (falsely) that Obama had called the attack a terror incident in his speech, and opines that moderator Candy Crowley, who came to Obama’s defense when Romney said the president didn’t call it terrorism, might have received one of those calls, so was predisposed to assume the president had said it. Romney had momentum  – he had easily won the first debate – but lost it after he came across looking like an idiot for mis-stating what Obama said when, in fact, Romney was correct. It was the ultimate use of propaganda that may well have determined the election. Joseph Goebbels would be proud (my observation, not Attkisson's).

• The media picks and chooses stories that make the administration look good and purposely omits those that make it look bad, such as a series of reports about green energy companies, funded by billions of tax dollars delivered by Obama, that went bust. There were many more in addition to Solyndra but the mainstream media didn’t report about them because the media doesn’t want the public to question the wisdom of an administration that poured all that money down the drain.

• The administration is vindictive to those who cross it. She says the administration knew all along that CIA chief David Petraeus was having an affair but didn’t leak the news until Petraeus publicly doubted the administration’s claims about Benghazi, at which point his affair took over the news cycle. The media, eager to divert attention from Benghazi, turned its focus onto the Petraeus scandal.

• Broadcast networks, due to management’s fear of risking the wrath of administration officials for airing stories that make government look bad, no longer investigate stories on their own and will only report stories that have already been published by The New York Times or Washington Post, neither of which are objective news sources in the first place. She says management doesn’t want any controversy, which is why network newscasts spend so much time on weather-related stories that used to be the purview of local affiliates.

• The media refuses to report gaffes made by Obama, who once boasted he has visited all 57 states, claimed that Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville are on the Gulf of Mexico (they’re on the Atlantic), and said that Austrians speak “Austrian” (they speak German). She pointed out the media has a field day every time a Republican makes a similar gaffe.

• CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor and director of strategic communications and speechwriting (e.g. propaganda), which may account for CBS’ reluctance to report stories unfavorable to the administration. (Interesting aside: Attkisson says that Wikipedia, the online “free encyclopedia anyone can edit” is, despite its claims, anything but objective and that Wikipedia editors control and delete information that “threatens their agenda.” I looked up David Rhodes on Wikipedia. Nowhere in his bio does it mention his brother’s role in the Obama administration. And now back to our regularly-scheduled objective newscast.)

• CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley spikes stories that might cause controversy and/or that clash with his personal beliefs and spent an inordinate amount of time re-writing Attkisson's stories, but lets stories favorable to the administration stand.

This has been a good week for the Obama administration. The Supreme Court affirmed both Obamacare and marriage equality. Supporters celebrating these wins have every right to feel good about what is happening in our country.

At the same time, all of us – Democrats, Republicans or (Attkisson’s description of herself) “political agnostics” – owe it to our country to consider the points Attkisson raises.

The Internet has changed news – the way it’s delivered and the quantity of it. It would be naïve to assume that the next administration, and the next, and the next, won’t recognize the easy ride Obama has enjoyed and the ease with which his communications experts have manipulated the media, and won't continue to employ the same tactics. Obama supporters need to ask themselves how they would feel if the Republicans win the next election and are able to control the news to the same extent the current administration does. Propaganda is propaganda and, ultimately, we all lose when we fall for it.

The government works for us. Officials need to be forthcoming, and to not spend our money and their time spinning bullshit stories that will be picked up by web sites that do their biding and disseminate the news to other sites that reach millions of readers.

The media also works for us. Americans can get our news from lots of sources. We need to be careful we are getting it from sources that aren’t intimated or in the pocket of any political party or politician, and that strive to report the facts, leaving us free to interpret them ourselves.

As Attkisson says in Stonewalled, “Think for yourself.”

Sound advice.

Post note: Once I finished writing this, I decided to see what The New York Times had to say about Attkisson’s book, which made its best seller list, so I looked up its review. There wasn’t one.