Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

Overview

Seasoned CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reveals how she has been electronically surveilled while digging deep into the Obama Administration and its scandals, and offers an incisive critique of her industry and the shrinking role of investigative journalism in today’s media.

Americans are at the mercy of powerful figures in business and government who are virtually unaccountable. The Obama Administration in particular has broken new ground in its monitoring of journalists, intimidation and harassment of opposition groups, and surveillance of private citizens.

Sharyl Attkisson has been a journalist for more than thirty years. During that time she has exposed scandals and covered controversies under both Republican and Democratic administrations. She has also seen the opponents of transparency go to ever greater lengths to discourage and obstruct legitimate reporting.

Attkisson herself has been subjected to “opposition research” efforts and spin campaigns. These tactics increased their intensity as she relentlessly pursued stories that the Obama Administration dismissed. Stonewalled is the story of how her news reports were met with a barrage of PR warfare tactics, including online criticism, as well as emails and phone calls up the network chain of command in an effort to intimidate and discourage the next story. In Stonewalled, Attkisson recounts her personal tale, setting it against the larger story of the decline of investigative journalism and unbiased truth telling in America today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062322869
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	425
Sales rank:	106,865
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sharyl Attkisson has been a working journalist for more than thirty-five years and is host and managing editor of the nonpartisan Sunday morning TV program Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson. She has covered controversies under the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, emerging with a reputation, as the Washington Post put it, as a “persistent voice of news-media skepticism about the government’s story.” She is the recipient of five Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting. She has worked at CBS News, PBS, and CNN and is a sixth degree blackbelt master in Taekwondo.

Table of Contents

Prologue Big Brother: My Computer's Intruders 1

Chapter 1 Media Mojo Lost: Investigative Reporting's Recession 15

Chapter 2 Fast and Furious Redux: Inside America's Deadly Gunwalking Disgrace 92

Chapter 3 Green Energy Going Red: The Silent Burn of Your Tax Dollars 139

Chapter 4 Benghazi: The Unanswered Questions 159

Chapter 5 The Politics of HealthCare.gov (and Covering It) 226

Chapter 6 I Spy: The Government's Secrets 282

Conclusion The "Sharyl Attkisson Problem" 344

Index 409

Editorial Reviews

A deep, nuanced and indignant indictment of the players who have made investigative journalism harder to conduct, even if those actors are other journalists. — Kirkus Reviews

“Attkisson offers a harrowing and gripping account of journalism as practiced these days in Washington. She skillfully unveils how she discovered the secret scheme to spy on her. The larger and more disturbing takeaway is how the mainstream are falling down on the job.” — Jeff Gerth, Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times

From the Publisher

Attkisson offers a harrowing and gripping account of journalism as practiced these days in Washington. She skillfully unveils how she discovered the secret scheme to spy on her. The larger and more disturbing takeaway is how the mainstream are falling down on the job.

Jeff Gerth

04/01/2016
Despite having been on the beat for more than 30 years, journalist Attkisson claims that she never encountered the type of resistance that she experienced from the Obama administration. Her coverage of Benghazi and the launch of the Affordable Care Act earned her the enmity of her network employer and the government. This page-turning memoir explains why the media are held in such low regard.

Library Journal