Fox News abruptly ended its interview with Thomas Ricks after the author accused the network of "hyping" the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. As Ricks claimed the Fox News channel had no journalistic integrity, and was guilty of "operating as a wing of the Republican Party," the interview was cut short.

A former military beat reporter at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Ricks is a veteran newspaper reporter and had been invited on the network by producers to discuss his book, "The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to Today" with anchor Jon Scott.

At first Scott focuses the conversation on the Republican Party's criticism of United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice's comments about the attack on the American Embassy in Libya. Ricks responded that he doubted the Republican Party could successfully block Rice from becoming Secretary of State, and that he thought Benghazi was "generally hyped, by this network especially."

Ricks's blunt accusation sparked Scott to ask how the network had over-hyped the attack, reminding him the event killed four Americans, including the first U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years.

Ricks answered his question with a question. "How many security contractors have been killed in Iraq? Do you know?" he asked Scott, inferring the number was somewhere in the hundreds, much larger than the four Americans killed in Benghazi. He then said the media attention from Fox News on Benghazi was disproportionate when comparing the two.

He described the attacks on the Libya embassy as "essentially a small firefight."

He continued: "Ive covered a lot of fire fights; it's impossible to tell what's happens in them sometimes. I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party."

As soon as Ricks had made that comment, Scott said thank you and allowed his co-anchor to introduce a commercial break.

In the aftermath of the interview, Fox accused Ricks of "ignoring" the interviewers questions, and had a different goal to the reasons the network had brought him on the news program.

Fox News executive Michael Clemente said, "When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor's question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself and his book," according to the Associated Press, possibly revealing he'd never watched TV news before.

"The Generals," the book that Ricks was ostensibly on Fox News to promote, analyzes the performance of generals and the civilian leaders who oversee them from Pearl Harbor to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Examining leadership in the military from the ground up, Ricks's book is "about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails," says publisher Penguin.

"The Generals" is receiving mostly positive reviews and has a 4/5 currently on Amazon.

"His conclusions are stark, fact-based and strongly argued: The U.S. Army is often led by generals who are masterful at combat tactics, at converging battalions on an agreed-upon enemy target, but woefully inept at recognizing changes in the battlefield, like the emergence of an insurgency in Iraq or the reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan," said the Los Angeles Times in its review.

So, what do you think? Was Ricks out of line? Should Fox News have cut the interview short?