Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson said she has never seen the number of supposed open government groups and journalists "so uncurious and begging" not to be told about alleged or supposed violations of citizens rights.



In an interview with Tucker Carlson on the Tuesday edition of his FOX News show, the veteran journalist said "propagandists" have been invited into newsrooms to dictate "talking points de jour," making it more difficult to do unbiased reporting.



Attkisson also talked about intelligence agencies introducing "bad evidence" to obtain a FISA warrant or using a "reverse engineering" method to surveil someone else who is not the target.











"Long before Trump announced running for president, I had intel sources, contacts, who I'm still in touch with, who have said that for a long time there has been presentation of bad evidence to the FISA court to justify warrants, that there has been sort of a reverse engineering when political figures want to target people illegally," Attkisson said.



"They find someone in their orbit that they can target and then capture them incidentally and then accidentally capture their data and unmask them acting surprised that that's who it was when that's the target that they intended to capture all along," she explained.





TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Spats over Russia are distracting from the real issue of the Nunes menu, the possibility that intelligence services are spying on you and other American citizens without real restrictions.



Sharyl Attkisson host Sinclair's "Full Measure" has herself said that she's the target of government surveillance and she joins us tonight. Sharyl, thanks a lot for coming on. You spent years on this question with basically no support from your colleagues in the media or relatively little.



Are you surprised by the posture in the press which is, it is wrong to want to know more about who the government is spying on?



SHARYL ATTKISSON: Well, I'm not because, as I've written in the last couple of years and spoken to, I think the press in general, while there are still many good reporters doing independent reporting, it's getting harder.



We have invited some of the propagandists into our newsrooms, we allow them to dictate the talking points and messages du jour. And it's getting more difficult, I think, to find sort of down the middle, unbiased reporting.



CARLSON: But shouldn't the default position of a journalist be more information rather than less? So, when we learned last week of the possibility that the US government spied on a US citizen on the basis of pretty flaky information, was it weird to see reporters stand up and say, tell us no more! We don't want to know! In fact, you are unpatriotic if you want to know more.



ATTKISSON: I've never seen anything like it. in fact, I commented that I've never, in my lifetime, seen open government groups and journalists so uncurious and begging not to be told about alleged or supposed violations of citizens' rights.



And this leads into a much larger picture, I think, of surveillance abuses that have occurred over the past 10, 20 years involving citizens, politicians and journalists.



CARLSON: So, I mean, just to do the opposite of putting our fears to rest, this is not as uncommon as we hope it is, is it?



ATTKISSON: I think not. Long before Trump announced running for president, I had intel sources, contacts, who I'm still in touch with, who have said that for a long time there has been presentation of bad evidence to the FISA court to justify warrants, that there has been sort of a reverse engineering when political figures want to target people illegally.



They find someone in their orbit that they can target and then capture them incidentally and then accidentally capture their data and unmask them acting surprised that that's who it was when that's the target that they intended to capture all along.



CARLSON: It's totally wrong. Sharyl Attkisson, you are one of the first to call attention to this kind of thing and we're grateful for that. Thank you.