Sharyl Attkisson, investigative correspondent for CBS News, has resigned from the network.
From Politico (emphasis added):
CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has reached an agreement to resign from CBS News ahead of contract, bringing an end to months of hard-fought negotiations, sources familiar with her departure told POLITICO on Monday.Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.At the same time, Attkisson’s own reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. She is currently at work on a book — tentatively titled “Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington” — which addresses the challenges of reporting critically on the Obama administration.Feeling increasingly stymied and marginalized at the network, Attkisson began talking to CBS News President David Rhodes as early as last April about getting out of her contract. Those negotiations intensified in recent weeks, and her request was finally honored on Monday.Reached by phone, Attkisson described her resignation as “amicable.” She said she will now turn her attention to the book, which is being published by HarperCollins, a division of NewsCorp (and not by Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS Corporation.)Sonya McNair, the senior vice president for communications for CBS News, said in a statement: “CBS News veteran Sharyl Attkisson is leaving the news division to pursue other endeavors. We appreciate her many contributions and we wish her well.”
Attkisson’s Gunwalker story won an Edward R. Murrow Award in the Video Investigative Category in 2012. She also actively covered the “Fast and Furious” story and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi, among other stories.
Last year, Attkisson revealed that her computer had been hacked. CBS published a report indicating that it had hired a cybersecurity firm to confirm this through forensic analysis, but the report did not identify any source of the intrusion.
As Politico notes, Attkisson has won five Emmy awards “for her reporting on Fast and Furious, the Red Cross, Republican fundraising, TARP and border patrol.”
(Featured image: C-SPAN video)
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