Sharyl Attkisson on ditching CBS: Obama administration has ‘chilling effect’ on reporting

Former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson told Fox News she resigned because the network was becoming “too shy” about covering the Obama administration honestly.

Attkisson, who appeared on “Media Buzz” Sunday left her position at CBS last month after 20 years of investigative reporting. She told FOX News host Howard Kurtz the media overall seem less interested in original and in-depth reporting.

Saying reporters appear shy about challenging the Obama administration, Attkisson told Kurtz she didn’t encounter the same roadblocks when “aggressively” pursuing stories about the Bush administration, including topics like its secrecy on information requests, poor management of the Food and Drug administration and the Halliburton-Iraq contracts.

Many stories about Obama’s administration never made it on the air, she said.

“It never runs,” she said. “Or it dies the death of a thousand cuts, as some of us say. If it’s something they don’t want, it will be changed and revised and shortened and altered so much that it’s a shadow of its former self if it does air.”

CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager talked her out of leaving last year, Attkisson said.

“There’s a difference between some managers wanting and believing in a mission, and it actually translating to the broadcasts which are, by and large, very independent in some ways, and the translation just never got made, and I think it’s more of a trend than something that just involves me at CBS,” she said.

Atkisson said the Obama administration has cast a “chilling effect” on media reports.

“There is pressure coming to bear on journalists for just doing their job in ways that have never come to bear before,” she said. “Now, there’s always been tensions. There have always been calls from the White House under any administration, I assume, when they don’t like a particular story. But it’s particularly aggressive under the Obama administration.”

Attkisson is writing a book, “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

Watch her interview here via Fox News:

 

Watch also: Judge Jeanine skewers ex-CIA chief over Benghazi: ‘You sold your soul’

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