Spotlight: GOP presidential candidate blasts media as arm of Hillary Clinton's campaign

A top Republican presidential candidate on Wednesday blasted U.S. mainstream media for lacking trustworthiness and being biased in favor of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"Democrats have the ultimate super PAC. It's called the mainstream media," said Senator Marco Rubio at the third GOP primary debate in Colorado.

What Rubio referred to was U.S. media coverage of Clinton's testimony last week to a House panel which was investigating events leading up to the 2012 deadly attack at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed.

Rubio said that while Clinton told her family in an email that the attack was caused by "al-Qaeda-like elements," she and the Obama administration mentioned protests resulting from an anti-Islam video as a cause.

"It was the week she (Clinton) got exposed as a liar," said Rubio, who is currently ranked third in the still crowed 15-member GOP presidential field. "But she has her super PAC helping her out, the American mainstream media."

After Clinton's Benghazi testimony, media outlets compared House Republicans' frustration about how to defeat Clinton with Clinton's calmness, calling last week the best week for Clinton's campaign.

During the testimony on Oct. 22, the notion that Clinton had known from the very beginning that the 2012 Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack was first raised by Republican representative Jim Jordan, who accused Clinton of deliberately linking the attack to local protests against an inflammatory anti-Islam video to salvage Obama's re-election effort and her reputation.

"You can live with a protest about a video. That won't hurt you. But a terrorist attack will. So you can't be square with the American people," said Jordan. "You did it because Libya was supposed to be ... this great success story for the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department," said Jordan.

The revelation was made about three years after the incident happened as the U.S. State Department continued to release batches of Clinton's work-related emails sent from her private email account while serving as the secretary of state following a court order.

According to newly released communications, on the night of the attack, Clinton, then U.S. secretary of state, released a statement which read: "Some have sought to justify the vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet."

However, in her exchange of emails with her family one hour later than the release of her public statement, Clinton then told her family that "Two officers were killed today in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda-like group."

Also, Clinton's two other newly released communications with Libyan president and Egyptian prime minister within 24 hours after the attack revealed that Clinton was fully aware that "the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It's a planned attack, not a protest."

However, five days after the attack, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told five Sunday TV shows that the attack "began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to" protests in Cairo, Egypt, sparked by "this hateful video." Endi