NBC and ABC fail to report on the capture of five ISIS leaders

At Newsbusters, Nicholas Fondacaro reported,

There was a lot of winning for the United States this week between the release of three American hostages from North Korea, unemployment at 3.9 percent, and on Thursday news broke that the U.S. had captured five of ISIS’s top leaders. But depending on which of the major network news outlets you watch, you may not have heard about the captured leaders. CBS Evening News was the only member of the big three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) to even mention it that evening. The national evening newscasts of Spanish-language Univision and Telemundo also kept quiet about it.



“Five senior ISIS leaders have been captured in a joint operation involving Iraqi and U.S.-backed Syrian forces,” announced anchor Jeff Glor ahead of the full report. “It is the latest defeat for the extremist group, which has lost nearly all of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.”

As Homeland Security correspondent Jeff Pegues began his report, he played clips of Iraqi television showing off their recent victory. “The ISIS commanders' confessions were broadcast on Iraqi television this morning. One by one, the men in the yellow jumpsuits and handcuffs admitted to being top Islamic State leaders,” he reported.

As explained by Pegues, coalition forces had captured one top leader and it triggered “an elaborate intelligence operation” which used his phone to lure four others into a trap in Iraq. “The Iraqi government said information gathered during interrogations led to an air force strike it claims killed another 40 ISIS terrorists,” he noted as a video of a large building being turned to rumble and dust played.

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