Fair and Balanced and Benghazi
by digby
I posted last night about what appears to be a Benghazi hoax broadcast by 60 Minutes and reported by Lara Logan. This article in Foreign Policy adds some new details:
What’s beyond dispute is that Jones worked for the Britain-based contractor Blue Mountain, which was hired by the State Department to oversee perimeter security at the compound. On Thursday, the Washington Post obtained Jones’ written account of the Sept. 11 attack that he gave to his bosses a few days after the incident. In contrast with the 60 Minutes account, which saw him knocking out terrorists with the butt end of his rifle and scaling a 12-foot wall the night of the attack, the Blue Mountain report has Jones at his beach-side villa for the majority of the night. Despite an attempt to make it to the compound, Jones wrote that “we could not get anywhere near … as roadblocks had been set up.”
According to the newspaper, “[Jones] wrote that he visited the still-smoking compound the next day to view and photograph the destruction.”
There are also other red flags the Post story doesn’t include. For weeks, it seems, Jones tried to profit off his brush with disaster. In a Fox News report on Monday, reporter Adam Housley said his source relationship with Jones ended after he insisted upon receiving money. “He spoke to me on the phone a number of times and then we stopped speaking to him when he asked for money,” Housley said. On Fox News, that fact is introduced as an incidental footnote to the network’s follow up on the 60 Minutes story. It has become more relevant in light of The Post’s report. (Paying sources for information is typically frowned upon in American journalism.)
Jones has other ways of cashing in as well. This week, his book titled The Embassy House was published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which is a part of CBS Corporation, which owns 60 Minutes — a fact not disclosed in the 60 Minutes story. His book is also going to make it on the silver screen. In October, Thunder Road acquired The Embassy House for a feature on the Benghazi attack produced by Basil Iwanyk and executive produced by Taylor Sheridan.
At press time, a representative at Threshold Editions in charge of publicity for The Embassy House did not respond to a request for comment. 60 Minutes has said “We stand firmly by the story we broadcast last Sunday.”
When asked if Senator Graham’s hold on all White House nominees was still in effect in light of the criticisms of Jones’s account, Graham’s spokesman said “no change.”
I would guess that 60 Minutes didn’t directly pay this fellow for his story. They didn’t have to. Their parent company is paying him for his book. That works out nicely, doesn’t it?
I would say you are definitely in trouble when it’s revealed that Fox News refused to find a way to pay this fellow for his big Benghazi scoop. They’ve pretty much changed their slogan to “Fair and Balanced and Benghazi.” If anyone would have jumped at the chance it would be them. And they didn’t.
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