Benghazi and the Fox News Effect

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Why has the shameful witch hunt against Susan Rice continued to gain traction even though there is literally not a shred of evidence that she did anything wrong? I’d say this Pew poll tells us all we need to know. The only segment of the country that really cares about the sham Benghazi scandal is Republicans, and the reason Republicans are riled up about it is because of Fox News. How far down the rabbit hole have they gone with their 24/7 hysteria? A friend who follows their coverage closely emailed a few days ago to tell me what it’s like these days: “Listening to Fox on this is like watching a Fellini movie.”

And while we’re on the subject: as they’ve started to lose traction on their more outré conspiracy theories (Obama watched the attack in real time, he ordered military troops not to intervene, he was blackmailing David Petraeus, etc.), Republicans have been reduced to blustering about their outrage that the intelligence community’s explanation of what happened in Benghazi has changed over time. There’s nothing especially scandalous about this, of course, since that’s pretty much what you’d expect to happen as they got more information. It’s not really clear why the mainstream media is paying any attention to this unusually lame complaint.

But my friend points out something that really can’t be emphasized enough: in fact, their explanations haven’t really changed all that much. “They still think protests against the video were part of this in various ways; they still don’t think al Qaeda or even meaningfully ‘al Qaeda-linked’ groups were involved, although perhaps an individual or two; and they still think this wasn’t ‘pre-planned’ to any significant degree. I’d say those initial talking points have held up remarkably well.” Given the usual fog surrounding events like this, I think that’s right. See Joe Klein for more on this.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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