OK, one more post on the attempted smear of Barack Obama and the bogus claim that the senator was educated, at age six, in a terrorist-sympathizing madrassa. The story has been debunked, repeatedly, by news outlets large and small, and I’d assumed that there wasn’t much left to say.
But the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick did a nice job taking a closer look at the “news” magazine that started the smear in the first place.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters.
But their anonymity has not stopped them from making an impact. In the last two weeks, Mr. Kuhner’s Web site, Insight, the last remnant of a defunct conservative print magazine owned by the Unification Church led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was able to set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting.
Some of these details are new to me. I knew Insight used to appear in print edition, but I didn’t realize the magazine is now exclusively online (Insight never had many readers; it must have been hard for Moon’s church to justify the expense of a print edition).
More importantly, I never appreciated the fact that Insight’s articles generally don’t have bylines. Indeed, Insight won’t identify who wrote the Obama smear-job or who the quoted sources are. Indeed, Insight’s Kuhner won’t even say whether he knows the mystery reporter’s sources.
That’s some real substantiation, isn’t it? An online magazine, owned by a mysterious and controversial church, publishes an easily-debunked article written by an anonymous “reporter” with impossible-to-verify “sources.” Kuhner then insists the article is as “solid as solid can be.”
He may want to consider a career in comedy.
How bad is it? The Washington Times, Insight’s older sibling in the Moon media empire, finds the magazine terribly embarrassing.
The Washington Times, which is also owned by the Unification Church, but operates separately from the Web site, quickly disavowed the article. Its national editor sent an e-mail message to staff members under the heading “Insight Strikes Again” telling them to “make sure that no mention of any Insight story” appeared in the paper, and another e-mail message to its Congressional correspondent instructing him to clarify to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama that The Washington Times had nothing to do with the article on the Web site.
“Some of the editors here get annoyed when Insight is identified as a publication of The Washington Times,” said Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times.
Pruden publishes some pretty sketchy right-wing reports, and even he doesn’t want anything to do with Insight.
As for how the Obama article made the rounds so quickly, it’s a funny story:
“I said [to the article’s unnamed writer], ‘That is a sexy story, if you can confirm it,’ ” Mr. Kuhner recalled. After Insight posted the article on Jan. 17, Mr. Kuhner said, he was disappointed to see that the Drudge Report did not link to it on its Web site as it has done with other Insight articles. So, as usual, he e-mailed the article to producers at Fox News and MSNBC.
As Kevin Drum put it, “Your media machine at work.”