Thomas Ricks, a veteran newspaper reporter and author of "The Generals," who was brought on for an interview with anchor Jon Scott about Republican criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments about the attacks.

Ricks said he thought the story of the Benghazi attacks was "hyped, by this network especially."

Scott asked why Ricks would call it hype when four Americans were killed, including the first U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years.

Ricks responded that few people knew how many U.S. security contractors were killed in Iraq and compared that to the attention paid to "what was essentially a small firefight" in Libya.

"I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party," Ricks said.

With that, Scott thanked him and turned to a co-anchor, who introduced a commercial.

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Fox News has devoted far more airtime to the events in Benghazi, on Sept. 11, than other television news networks, with numerous suggestions that the Obama administration is engaged in a cover-up. Erik Wemple of The Washington Post and the anti-Fox group Media Matters, among others, have documented the ups and downs of Fox’s reporting on the subject.

The excerpts above are from The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times.

Click here to watch the video clip of the incident.