So Much For Balanced News Coverage--Conservative Resigns

Atkisson Quits CBS News Over Network’s Liberal Bias, Complicity In Promoting White House Narratives

March 10, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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Sharyl Atkisson, one of the few reporters in mainstream media who has never strayed far from the lessons they (presumably) still teach in J-school, has agreed to an early resignation from her investigative correspondent’s position at CBS News.

The Obama Administration must be thrilled. Atkisson has been a major thorn in the side of the White House ever since she began doggedly pursuing oft-ignored threads in the official narrative of the timeline of the events that claimed four American lives during the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya – and she’s remained outspoken about the Obama Administration’s stonewalling tactics to ensure she never inched near the truth.

CBS News was never comfortable with that sort of investigative determination, and both parties had been in negotiations for the past several months over whether, and how, to clear her a graceful exit path from the network, according to POLITICO:

Atkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.

… Feeling increasingly stymied and marginalized at the network, Atkisson began talking to CBS News President David Rhodes as early as last April about getting out of her contract. Those negotiations intensified in recent weeks, and her request was finally honored on Monday.

Of course, the network has questioned her impartiality – chiefly because Atkisson is working on a book that narrates her struggles to get the Obama Administration to talk to her (and CBS News to air her reports). Crying foul inside the Washington, D.C. echo chamber apparently now constitutes conservative bias, so far as the suits at mainstream networks are concerned.

It will be interesting to see whether Atkisson lands at a smaller new media outlet that either claims a serious commitment to investigative reporting, or, at the very least, wears its political biases openly for all to see.