Media Ignore, Mock Susan Rice ‘Unmasking’ Bombshell

Normally, a scoop in Washington moves at the speed of light inside the media echo chamber, spreading the original story across the country.

But Monday’s report by Bloomberg News that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice “unmasked” the names of President Donald Trump’s associates whose identities had been disguised in surveillance reports fell largely on deaf ears.

“The investigations continue, but particularly on the House side there are now questions coming from both Democrats and Republicans about how bipartisan this investigation can be.”

Except when news organizations attempted to knock the story down.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday called it “another fake scandal being peddled by right-wing media.”

Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security correspondent, appeared Monday night on “Anderson Cooper 360” to read a statement from someone close to Rice, denying wrongdoing. He then accused the Trump administration of manufacturing a non-story in order to divert attention from possible nefarious links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

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For good measure, he took a shot at House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who went public with information he uncovered that Trump associates had been improperly unmasked.

“And again, to note by senior intelligence officials who work for both Democrats and Republicans, this appears to be a story, largely ginned up, partly as a distraction from this larger investigation,” Sciutto said. “But I will say, Anderson, and you are aware of this. The investigations continue, but particularly on the House side there are now questions coming from both Democrats and Republicans about how bipartisan this investigation can be.”

Tim Graham, director of media analysis the conservative-leaning Media Research Center, noted Sciutto is not exactly a neutral observer. Graham said Sciutto was an Obama administration appointee working on foreign affairs. Graham said the media in general cast themselves as truth-seekers who sift through competing lines offered by Republicans and Democrats.

“They don’t do that,” he said. “They line up right on the middle of the Democratic line and stay there.”

Graham said the tone of coverage almost certainly would have been different if reporters learned that officials in the outgoing George W. Bush administration had unmasked the names of people associated with the Obama campaign in 2008. As for the current story, he said, an unbiased media would investigate the possibility of collusion between Trump associates and Russia while also reporting on overreach by Obama officials.

“This is not either-or,” he said. “You can do both.”

On Tuesday, CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota tried to get Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to discredit the Rice story. Even McCain, one of the president’s harshest Republican critics, wasn’t prepared to do that.

“The circumstances indicate that there’s a possibility that request could have been politically motivated, but we need to get to the bottom of it … I can’t make a judgment on what I just heard,” McCain said. “She did have the authority to do it. What was the motivation for doing it, I think, was the question.”

Camerota tried again, telling McCain that the network’s reporting indicates that Rice saw a masked name of an American in surveillance reports at about the same time that then-President Barack Obama imposed sanctions in retaliation for Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign.

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“Wouldn’t that arouse some curiosity on her part?” she asked.

McCain fell back on his longstanding call for a special select committee to take charge of the congressional investigation.

“All I can say, Alisyn, is that I don’t know enough to reach a conclusion except to say this is another aspect of this multi-dimensional scandal,” he said. “This is one of the bigger ones that we have seen in a number of years.”

According to a report by the Media Research Center, the approach taken by ABC and NBC was simply to ignore the story. On the “CBS Evening News,” reporter Margaret Brennan shared with viewers her conversation with an unnamed former national security official who defended Rice. The official, according to Brennan, acknowledged that Rice requested the names of people picked up in surveillance of foreigners.

“However, Rice did not spread the information, according to this former official, who insisted that there was nothing improper or political involved,” Brennan said.

The segment contrasted with reporting by LifeZette and others that Rice’s activities — if proven true — might constitute a crime.