Local Crime Stories

I’ve never been able to get worked up about the Benghazi attack. I always thought that the refusal to order a prompt rescue mission was judgment call. The story cooked up that the attack was a response to a video was also pretty obviously a lie and a political attempt to prevent the story being about the administration’s failure to prevent the killing of the US ambassador by an Al-Qaeda affiliate on September 11.  After all, the administration could hardly be faulted for not anticipating the response to a YouTube video. Lots of YouTube videos out there.

The testimony and emails revealed at the hearings today make it clear that the State Department had information that the Benghazi consulate attack was not a “demonstration” long before ambassador Susan Rice went on television to pretend that the administration believed the Benghazi attack caused by a video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

So I made it a point to watch all three major network evening news broadcasts. All three covered the story. They all had fair pieces on the question of whether a rescue mission should have been attempted. They all played down the aspects of the story dealing with the administration’s fake Benghazi talking points.

What struck me was that all three newscasts led with the story of the horrible Cleveland kidnapping case. I can understand why they did so. Benghazi is a complicated story about a far way place. The pro-sensationalism incentives of modern network news are such that the mainstream media will have a strong bias in favor of intensely covering (and even hyping) a story about a house of horrors in which spectacular and disgusting crimes were committed for years and years right under the noses of authorities. Which certainly explains their coverage of the Gosnell murder trial.

The mainstream media have a boundless appetite for covering “local crime” stories.  Sometimes.