Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  “You’re not going to believe this, but she wants us to get permission from the defendant’s lawyer to use his face or else wuzz it out.”

  “What?!?” says Kim, dumbfounded. “That’s outrageous.”

  Kim makes another attempt to reach the attorney, whom we’d tried earlier. It’s futile at this hour. And we know that, if asked, he’ll say no anyway. So we go ahead and blur the suspect’s face and refeed the story to New York.

  In some ways, this may not sound like a big deal. What’s the harm in masking a criminal suspect’s identity? I know the answer and it nags away at me. The executive producer’s misguided and capricious decision hasn’t avoided risk; it’s actually created a potential liability. We’ve now set a precedent that sets us up for accusations of bias and inconsistent treatment.

  For example, Substitution Game: Following the February 2012 fatal shooting of the black youth Trayvon Martin in Florida, which ignited allegations of racism, we rightfully identified the gunman, George Zimmerman, though he hadn’t been arrested, let alone convicted of anything. But under the executive producer’s current reasoning, we shouldn’t have identified Zimmerman or shown his face—unless we had his permission. That’s absurd, of course, but it’s the sort of comparison invited by her order to blur the face of the alleged credit card thief. I imagine the lawyer for other suspects whom we’ve previously identified asking CBS:

  “Why did you blur out the face of this credit card suspect?”

  “Well, because he hadn’t been convicted of anything,” we would answer.

  “My client hadn’t been convicted of anything either—why did you show his face? Do you have something against my client?”

  Worried about the wrong things and not worried about the right things.

  The tendency to stick to mostly “safe” stories means you’ll see a lot of so-called day-of-air reports on topics that won’t generate pushback from the special interests we care about. Think: weather, polls, surveys, studies, positive medical news, the pope, celebrities, obituaries, press conferences, government announcements, animals, the British royals, and heartwarming features. They fill airtime much like innocuous white noise.

  Crafting the special news concoction of safe stories and ones that push certain agendas requires finding reasons to avoid—I would say censor—stories and topics that don’t fit the bill. That includes much of the original and investigative reporting that we supposedly covet. Yes, strong, original reporting still exists. But the behind-the-scenes struggles to get it on the air have grown more pitched and fruitless. And much more of that sort of reporting is cast aside than ever sees a national audience.

  In short: people assume a great deal of effort goes into putting terrific stories on the news. They’d be shocked to learn how much effort goes into keeping some of them off.

  On more than one occasion, I’ve been encouraged to stop reporting on an original topic that’s generating strong pushback from powerful entities or people.

  “Just wait and report if there’s a day-of-air story about it, you know, a congressional hearing or something,” I’m told by various managers.

  Translation: You’re pissing off important people. Stop breaking news on this topic. If something happens that everybody is reporting, we can join in. That’s . . . safe.

  It’s unconscionable that a news organization would actually forgo breaking important news in favor of staying safely back with the pack, but that’s exactly what happens, day in and day out. Instead, we spend our efforts chasing down an interview with the local news reporter who fainted during a live shot, resulting in a viral video.

  Often replacing what used to count as true and independent news is a new brand of reporting that assists paid interests who are pushing a business agenda.

  The lines have become blurred as corporations that own news divisions have come to view them as potential profit centers. This is understandable: corporations have a fiduciary duty to make financial decisions that benefit the business and any shareholders. If a network’s pharmaceutical client were to threaten to cancel millions of dollars in advertising if the network’s news division investigates and reports on its controversial product, the corporation may believe its fiduciary responsibility is to block the news division from doing the report. But therein lies the inherent conflict: the news division is supposed to shun the influence of financial interests. It’s sort of like saying that politicians are supposed to be above the influence of money while knowing that, in reality, they rely on cash from influential powers to get elected.

  Some broadcast managers’ idea of what constitutes “news” has shifted to fit the cold, hard reality. They instinctively shy away from stories that may offend advertisers or other powerful corporate interests. They don’t necessarily have to be told to do so. They’ve learned to self-censor. At the same time they insist there’s no room in the broadcast—or interest among viewers—for many investigative stories, they clear even more generous blocks of time for segments that promote commercial interests and have little genuine news value.

  One example is The Mysterious Case of the Incredibly Unwarranted National News Coverage of Taco Bell Dorito Shells. On March 21, 2012, CBS This Morning features a four-and-a-half-minute interview with Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed.

  “Listen to this! A taco shell made of nacho cheese Doritos!” reads one of the anchors, enthusiastically introducing Creed. That’s followed by such hard-hitting questions as “I’m curious about where the idea came from?” and “Are you handing out the breath mints?”

  Creed is pushing Taco Bell’s “reinvention of the taco” through the cross-promotional partnership with Doritos. As Creed puts it, “these two great products coming together . . . [are an] amazing combination . . . we have great quality, we have great taste, we have great value.” He points out that Taco Bell has “one hundred percent all-white all breast meat chicken” and concludes, “There’s so much happening at Taco Bell . . . You can customize anything at Taco Bell.”

  Viewers have just witnessed what amounts to little more than a product promotion presented under the guise of news. A few of us in the news division wonder aloud how Taco Bell managed to get CBS This Morning to do that.

  Ten months later, on January 29, 2013, Taco Bell’s Creed is back on CBS This Morning. This time, the news segment begins with the broadcast showing Taco Bell’s upcoming Super Bowl ad, after which the anchors bestow compliments on Creed as if they’re at an ad agency screening.

  “Nicely done, Taco Bell!”

  “I love it, I love it!”

  Then: probing questions.

  “How many times will this run during the Super Bowl?”

  “Let’s just talk about the Doritos Locos Taco—I mean that is quite a concept, essentially putting taco in a Dorito!” And—wait for it—the big reveal, provided exclusively to CBS This Morning: “Cool Ranch” flavor Dorito tacos are on the horizon!

  Whatever the motivation, these appearances are a marketing coup for Taco Bell. A national news organization has been convinced to treat a product promotion as if it’s a big breaking news story. Once the “news” is codified on the network news, other media outlets pick it up. The New York Daily News, Time Newsfeed, Buzzfeed, Business Insider, Gawker, Daily Finance, and Huffington Post advance the promotion, crediting CBS This Morning for being first to “break” the story.

  Note to self: there’s no time for an exclusive story exposing wrongdoing inside a corporation or government agency. They’re too busy chasing that Taco Bell Doritos exclusive.

  If we’re to believe that this is legitimate news coverage with no financial consideration provided by Taco Bell and Doritos, then why do the stories fail to address any of the obvious news controversies? Doritos, while an incredibly successful and yummy product, is nonetheless junk food in its purest form. But none of these news segments mentions the debate over scientific research linking some of the
artificial food coloring used in Doritos to ADHD and other health problems in children. There’s not a whiff of the news that European lawmakers require health warning labels on foods that contain some of the same artificial dyes. Critics could reasonably argue that these news segments uncritically push a potentially harmful product without making the public aware of the significant debate. Well, they could argue that if they were offered a voice in any of these segments, but they aren’t.

  A colleague in television network news tells me such “silliness” takes time away from a meaningful story we might have told. “I’m disappointed because of what is taken off the table. . . . We always believed we served the public interest and that doesn’t exist anymore. Our public interest is incidental to success.”

  Now that I’ve pointed it out, you’ll recognize how widespread this syndrome is and how much “news time” appears to be influenced by paid, commercial interests.

  On June 9, 2014, the Today show on NBC features a segment that’s little more than an ad for Dove products. Like the Taco Bell segment on CBS This Morning, the Today show begins by actually showing a commercial from the company. After that, there’s four more minutes promoting Dove, including interviews with a Dove ad campaign’s vice president of marketing and “an advisor on Dove Men research” (what is that, exactly?). The broadcast then promotes a Dove-created social media hashtag and encourages viewers to contribute by tweeting or Facebooking “real dad moments.”

  What stories weren’t told on this day because news time was filled with this promotion for Dove? What stories might not get covered in the future because of the news’ financial relationships with advertisers?

  Even though it’s a given that the Today show isn’t meant to be a hard news broadcast, the Dove episode caused quite an uproar among some inside the NBC News division. They were outraged over what they viewed as a number of steps taken within the news division to please the Dove corporate officials in the reported attempt to convince the company to provide a paid sponsorship for the news. They say internal news division emails refer to a Dove executive as “the client,” and indicate that news officials were letting him call the shots on “news coverage” of his product.

  Then, in July 2014, CBS This Morning spends two minutes and forty-five seconds of broadcast time on what amounts to a commercial for TGI Friday’s. It promotes the restaurant’s latest promotion: all-you-can-eat-appetizers on Fridays.

  “We’re at TGI Friday’s to take a look at their new recipe for profits and—here it is!” says the correspondent on the scene.

  The camera zooms out, similar in fashion to a TV ad, to show a display of all the tempting appetizer offerings on the menu.

  “This deal is only good for the summer,” adds the reporter, as if to say hurry, hurry!

  The anchors comment, “Smart idea! Everybody wins with all-you-can-eat” and “I think it’s a good idea!”

  It’s a telling glimpse into a TV news environment that has less appetite and less time than ever for serious, original, and investigative stories, but all the time in the world to promote commercial interests.

  When corporations approach news organizations with a press release on a product or concept they want to promote, we’re supposed to say, No thanks, we don’t usually do stories on press releases. That’s advertising, not news. If an advertiser tries to get a “news story” produced with the agenda of promoting its product, we should say, That wouldn’t be proper.

  But clever marketers may have learned that it’s easy to trade on their financial relationship with the parent corporation or manipulate us into treating promotional material as if it’s news. They may contact us and tell us that we can have an exclusive! How would you like to have the first interview with our CEO? They play one news organization against the other implying that our competitor might get the interview first if we don’t commit. Or, the opposite approach: they tell us that everyone else is interested in doing it and we’ll be left out if we don’t do it, too. They offer “round robins,” as we call them, in which compliant news organizations take turns, one right after the other, conducting the same interview with the same executive who’s promoting the same idea so that we can all publish roughly the same story and call it news. They play off our desire to be part of the pack. They exploit our fear that our competitors might have something that we don’t. They institute ground rules and embargoes on the information until a certain date and time that make it feel as though we’re brokering a very coveted deal! Pretty soon, we’re wrapped around the corporate finger: all competing to be first to do the company’s bidding, and touting it as a coup when we do. I can’t help but think that there must be marketing experts patting each other on the back as they watch, laughing all the way to the bank. But the public isn’t laughing.

  Maybe the airlines have figured this out. Several of us at CBS notice a rash of oddly uncritical airtime offered to various airline CEOs.

  On February 14, 2013, CBS This Morning interviews American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and US Airways CEO Tom Horton about their proposed, controversial merger. They need to put a good public face on the pending union to win crucial federal approval and this media outreach is part of their PR campaign. And we’re apparently delighted to be of service. For nearly four minutes in a joint interview, they promote their business deal, unchallenged, and dispel the notion that it could mean higher ticket prices for consumers. The anchors ask questions like:

  “You’ve been pushing for the merger for a long time. Why and why now?”

  “What’s the benefit for American with this merger?”

  “Sounds like a good deal . . . can’t wait to fly!”

  There’s no voice provided to consumer groups or antitrust experts who argue the merger is anticompetitive. In fact, you’d never know it from the interview, but there’s so much opposition to the merger that the Justice Department and a half dozen states would eventually sue to try to stop it.

  On May 22, 2013, Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza is provided three minutes and forty-eight seconds on CBS This Morning to counterspin a consumer survey that faulted Spirit for poor customer service. Of course, there’s nobody to present the consumer viewpoint. In the interview, Baldanza repeatedly touts his company’s cheap ticket prices and other advantages, adding: “We do have great customer service.”

  On August 1, 2013, United CEO Jeff Smisek is given more than seven minutes on CBS This Morning to insist that mergers in the industry are good and that there’s no major issue with Boeing’s beleaguered Dreamliner, which United flies. (It’s significant to note that CBS producers and management killed one of my in-depth stories on the Dreamliner’s battery problems six months earlier, despite strong verbal and written objections from me and several producers. More on that later.)

  On December 10, 2013, American CEO Parker is back on CBS This Morning. The US Airways–American merger is nearly complete and now he’s getting another unchallenged opportunity to push back against experts who still insist the consolidation will be bad for consumers. Except none of those experts are interviewed in the segment. “Nothing about this merger should affect prices,” says Parker, earnestly.

  Maybe Southwest Airlines felt left out. Three days later, on December 13, 2013, it’s Southwest’s chance to get four minutes and thirty seconds on CBS This Morning. CEO Gary Kelly reassures viewers that the controversial consolidation within the industry won’t result in higher fares. As usual, there’s nobody in the segment to challenge that contention, though there are plenty of formidable voices in the business world saying so. Instead, the time is taken up with Kelly making promotional points like “Southwest has the best Wi-Fi,” “You can count on companies like Southwest,” and “We have, we believe, the best people . . . the best service.”

  Many in the public recognize they’re not hearing about the news that’s important to them. They’re getting the news that other interests want them to have.

>   With so many important topics left unexplored, the topics are ceded to the interpretations and whims of social media, special interests, and bloggers whose mission is very different than that of a news journalist. The public is left with the choice of big media outlets that pretend certain topics of interest don’t exist, or conflicting, off-brand sources that publish opinion and rumor. That’s our fault.

  A network colleague observes, “In England they call us presenters. They don’t call us reporters. And in many ways, that’s what we’ve become.”

  | THE ASTROTURF EFFECT

  As the money trail leading from big corporations to government and nonprofits has become subject to more exposure, they increasingly use more surreptitious methods such as astroturf. As in fake grass roots.

  If you’re not familiar with the term, astroturf is when special interests disguise themselves and write blogs, publish letters to the editor, produce ads, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts, start nonprofits, or just post comments to online material with the intent of fooling you into believing an independent or grassroots movement is speaking. There’s an entire industry built around it in Washington, D.C., and some lobbyists now say that astroturf is more important and effective than traditional forms of influence, such as directly lobbying members of Congress.

  The whole point of astroturf is to give the impression there’s widespread support for an agenda when there’s not. Businesses may fund fake, astroturf “consumer campaigns” against competitors. Government may call upon its corporate partners to use astroturf methods to discredit reporters who threaten their mutual interests. You will no doubt see astroturf techniques used to attack the opinions and themes in this book, for obvious reasons.

  Once you begin to know what to look for, you can detect astroturf everywhere. Hallmarks include the use of inflammatory language such as “crank,” “paranoid,” “quack,” “nutty,” “lies,” “truther,” “conspiracy theorists,” “shoddy,” “witch hunt,” and “pseudo” in targeting the political-industrial complex’s enemies. Astroturfers often claim to “debunk myths” that aren’t myths at all. Another astroturf technique is to simply shove so much confusing and conflicting information into the mix, the public is left to throw up its hands and disregard all of it—including the truth.