Award-winning former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson painted a bleak picture of journalism today during her Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week, claiming it had “gone backwards” in the last 40 years.
The investigative journalism days of The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who doggedly pursued the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of then-President Richard Nixon are over, she said.
Although Attkisson was best known for her relentless pursuit of the facts surrounding the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, which took four American lives, she also extensively investigated the joint DOJ and ATF Operation Fast and Furious scandal.
Her book, Stonewalled, described the drip, drip, drip of information that came from the Obama White House during her reporting of its scandals.
She told the ABC panel:
I think that we’ve gone backwards since that time when we really felt empowered as journalists. And I’d like to think of what would happen today during a Nixon-type scandal. Nixon would basically refuse to turn over tapes to Congress, his aides would refuse to testify to Congress, or would take the fifth, or would lie to Congress with fair amount of impunity. Woodward and Bernstein would be controversialized on social media by special and political interests. And then, at the end, Nixon would go on a popular late-night comedy show, during which time, he would humorously refer to his attackers as people that were political witch hunters, who believe in Area 51-type conspiracy theories.
Here’s a clip of her appearance:
Twitter lit up afterwards. Here are a few examples:
@SharylAttkisson FANTASTIC!!!! You described exactly what is happening RIGHT NOW! The others didn’t get it.
— Republic Heritage (@RepublicBlog) August 10, 2014
@HeyTammyBruce @rcpvideo Because it’s not actually journalism, it’s advocacy disguised as fact-gathering.
— GOP Comedian (@GOPcomedy) August 10, 2014
You can purchase her book and learn about her current projects on her website. SharylAttkisson.com.
Check out more tweets of Attkisson’s appearance on Twitchy.
(h/t: TruthRevolt)
