Last year’s terrorist attack in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, demonstrated not only “derelection of duty” by President Obama, but also the failure of the news media, conservatives declared Thursday.

“American journalism is dead,” said Roger Noriega, who served as an Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush administration. “Rather than raise the tough questions [about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi] they have behaved like hockey goalies in front of President Obama’s net.”

The Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attack in Libya showed “gross mismanagement and colossal blunders,” Noriega, now with the American Enterprise Institute, said during the panel on ”Benghazi and Its Aftermath” at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Noriega said the media aided the Obama administration in a “cover-up,” saying that even before officials claimed the attack was a spontaneous protest inspired by a YouTube video, “they knew that story wasn’t true.”

Noriega’s criticisms were echoed by others on the CPAC panel, including former Oklahoma Rep. Ernest Istook, who said the Benghazi attack exposed “the shame of the media in failing to ask these questions” about the administration’s failures in Libya.

Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak called the Benghazi attack — which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -  “the worst national security failure since the original 9/11.” Pollak said that President Obama’s “dereliction of duty” in the Libya attack was evidence of “growing American weakness” in foreign policy.