As the presidential campaign has unfolded, there have been a handful of Washington Post articles about Democratic candidates that were so awful, I felt genuinely sorry for the newspaper. An odd front-page piece on John Edwards selling his house, a bizarre front-page expose on Hillary Clinton’s charitable donations, and the 1,300-word hit-job on the “controversy” surrounding Edwards’ haircut come to mind.
But today’s lengthy front-page piece on “rumors” about Barack Obama’s non-existent Muslim background may be the worst, most irresponsible piece of journalism I’ve seen from any respectable news outlet this year. I’ve gone through it a couple of times, and I can’t quite figure out what the Post’s editors were thinking publishing the piece at all, better yet on the front page.
The headline gets the ball rolling: “Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him” — as if Obama has Muslim “ties” that should be taken seriously.
In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama’s biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.
Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama’s stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.
Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.
The story proceeds to detail public attitudes about Muslims, quote Muslim leaders, share the concerns of anti-Muslim activists, compare Muslim’s public standing to Mormon’s, etc. It might be a perfectly reasonable piece if Obama weren’t an active, church-going Christian who has never been a Muslim.
To be sure, there’s some news in the fact that Obama critics are making up these lies in the first place. If the WaPo wanted to highlight the attempted smear, separating fact from fiction, that would make sense.
But this front-page story reads like a slam-job on a right-wing blog. It talks about “rumors,” without noting that they’re actually “lies.” It talks about Obama’s “denials,” as if the attacks might have some merit. Indeed, the article didn’t even mention the substance of the senator’s rejection of this nonsense until the 12th paragraph.
Conservative talk-show hosts have occasionally repeated the rumor, with Michael Savage noting Obama’s “background” in a “Muslim madrassa in Indonesia” in June, and Rush Limbaugh saying in September that he occasionally got “confused” between Obama and Osama bin Laden. Others repeatedly use the senator’s middle name, Hussein.
The rumors about Obama have been echoed on Internet message boards and chain e-mails.
Yes, and now that one of the nation’s most important newspaper have lent the nonsense credence with a front-page piece, the “rumors” (i.e., demonstrably false smears) will gain even more traction.
In fact, a piece like this, instead of setting the record straight for the public’s benefit, does the exact opposite — it suggests to voters that this is a legitimate area of inquiry. If someone is just hearing about these lies now, and the WaPo article is the first he or she has seen of this, the implication is that the attack is somehow plausible. The article never gets around to telling the reader the truth, which, ostensibly, is what political journalism is supposed to be all about.
The article even brings up the madrassa garbage, and notes that Obama denied its accuracy. The reality is far more complete — other news outlets investigated, and found out that the story was flat wrong. The Post didn’t find that little detail worth mentioning.
Josh Marshall adds:
I flagged it in a sarcastic way below. But this piece in the Post about ‘rumors’ of Obama being Muslim really is craven and gross…. The piece actually breaks new ground in the use of the word ‘rumor’. In public writing, ‘rumor’ generally refers to a wholly or partly unsubstantiated report. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that Obama is a Muslim any more than I am. So I would think the Internet sludge that has him attending Madrassas in Indonesia and being a covert Muslim today who plans to turn the US into a Muslim theocracy with mandatory gay marriage are not really ‘rumors’ but rather scurrilous lies which the Post has chosen to peddle (wink,wink) second hand.
C’mon, Washington Post, you’re better than this. You have to be better than this. The public needs you to be better than this.
Update: CBS News headline, as of an hour ago: “Obama Dogged By Muslim Rumors.” It’s almost as if the media is trying to be irresponsible.