The CBS Evening News on Wednesday ignored one of the day’s top news stories: the revelation that White House aide Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS president David Rhodes — instructed Susan Rice to emphasize a false talking point about the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
In a White House email chain recently obtained through a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, Ben Rhodes urged Rice “[t]o underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy” ahead of her infamous appearance on several Sunday shows.
The decision by CBS to ignore the story made the network unique among the nightly news broadcasts.
ABC World News ran a lengthy segment on the revelations, saying the White House was “feeling the heat” and that the “email seems to call into question what the White House said about its role” in deceiving the public about the cause of the Benghazi attacks.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl was especially aggressive in his questioning of the White House Wednesday afternoon, grilling press secretary Jay Carney about the administration’s failure to be forthcoming.
Likewise, NBC Nightly News highlighted the new emails Wednesday night, with Brian Williams saying they “reveal more about the effort to get then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to assert on the Sunday morning talk shows that the attack on the U.S. Consulate was a result of a demonstration over an internet video and not a failure of administration policy.”