Thomas Ricks Kicked Off Fox News After Accusing Network of Being Republican (Video, Photo)
Thomas Ricks was kicked off a Fox News interview on Monday after the author accused the network of hyping up the killing of four Americans in Banghazi, Libya. He claimed that the Fox News network had lost its journalistic integrity by "operating as a wing of the Republican Party."
Ricks is a veteran newspaper reporter and had been invited on the network by producers. Ricks is the author of "The Generals" and was shown on TV being interviewed by anchor Jon Scott.
The conversation focused on the Republican Party's criticism of the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice's comments about the attack on the American Embassy in Libya.
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The topic sparked Ricks to rant that the story about the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans, including the first U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years, was "hyped, by this network especially."
Ricks was then asked by Scott why he had described the coverage as hype when four Americans had been killed.
Ricks then went on to say that not many people were in the know about how many United States security contractors had been killed in Iraq, inferring the number was much greater than the four Americans killed in Banghazi. He then said the media attention from Fox News on Banghazi was disproportionate when comparing the two.
He described the bloody attacks on the Libya embassy as "essentially a small firefight."
Ricks then said, "I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party."
As soon as Ricks had made that comment, Scott said thank you and allowed his co-anchor to introduce a commercial break.
In the aftermath of the interview, Fox accused Ricks of "ignoring" the interviewers questions, and had a different goal to the reasons the network had brought him on the news program.
Fox News executive Michael Clemente said, "When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor's question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself and his book," according to the Associated Press.
