Making the news, not reporting it

Fox News and those Benghazi detainees

By Erik Wemple,WashPost

Twelfth in a series about Fox News’s Oct. 26 story on Benghazi, Libya.

Fox News’s now-famous Oct. 26 story on the tragedy of Benghazi carried this headline: “EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say.” Reaction to the story skewed toward the monster revelations in its first paragraph: namely, that the CIA chain of command had told security officials to “stand down” instead of jumping immediately to the assistance of a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11. The CIA, too, denied requests for military backup, according to the Fox News story.

Far, far less attention attached to a contention deep down in the Fox story:

According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.

So the CIA had taken a few detainees. No big deal, right?

Right, until biographer Paula Broadwell came along. As news of her affair with CIA Director David Petraeus emerged, folks started mining the Broadwell public record. As first reported by IsraelNationalNews.com, Broadwell had given some remarks at the University of Denver on Oct. 26, the same day of the Fox News piece that frames this sprawling series of posts. And Broadwell was up on the news; she took a question about Petraeus’s handling of Benghazi and steered her audience to Fox!

(More here.)