Something unusual happened
recently in Washington: A
crackpot, right-wing journal circulated a crude smear against two Democratic presidential candidates, and the mainstream news media quickly and thoroughly debunked it. It seemed a hopeful sign that professionalism may return to the national political press. But let’s not get carried away. Here’s what happened. Insightmag. com, a Web site describing itself as “America’s premier weekly Internet news magazine,” published an anonymously written, anonymously sourced article claiming that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign had dug up dirt on Sen. Barrack Obama. Specifically, Clinton operatives had supposedly learned that, contrary to his best-selling autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope,” the Illinois senator attended a Muslim fundamentalist religious school (a madrassa ) as a child in Indonesia.
According to Insight, financed by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, which also sponsors The Washington Times, there was reason to suspect Obama of being an Islamic “Manchurian Candidate,” i. e., a brainwashed religious fanatic programmed to undermine the U. S. from within. E-mail messages stressing Obama’s middle name, “Hussein,” have long circulated among the fruitcake right.
“Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state,” Insight claimed, “the U. S. intelligence community has determined that today most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.... The sources said the opponents are searching for evidence that Mr. Obama is still a Muslim or has ties to Islam.”
Maestro, cue the ominous soundtrack. It was a rare two-fer, planting suspicion against Obama while blaming Clinton. How these things have normally gone ever since one of Bill Clinton’s White House aides, Sidney Blumenthal, was mocked by all the clever Beltway pundits for accurately describing how the far right scandal machine works is like this: An unfounded, imaginary or wildly exaggerated charge first appears somewhere like The Drudge Report, the London Telegraph or one of the smutty British tabloids. Next it’s amplified by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and FOX News. Eventually, ABC News and / or CNN may air it, often with a “reportedly” or an “allegedly” added to salve the journalistic consciences of reporters who have no earthly idea if the allegation is true, half-true or sheer fiction. Ultimately, it becomes fodder for New York Times or Washington Post editorial columns, then gets masticated by chummy celebrity pundits on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” All this is published without ever having passed the who, what, when, where and why standards applied to, say, baseball trades on the sports page.
(Blumenthal was himself the subject of a false wife-beating smear, which he short-circuited with a libel suit. )
Actually, the whole process became more streamlined during Clinton’s second term, as Kenneth Starr’s leakomatic prosecutors hinted at nonexistent evidence for Hillary Clinton’s pending indictment directly to major metropolitan newspapers and TV networks. But that’s another story, one I’ve told elsewhere.
Say what you will about liberal bias. From the day The New York Times bought into the Whitewater hoax during the 1992 campaign until it finally unraveled after the Republicans’ failed impeachment of President Clinton, what amazed me as a provincial journalist unaccustomed to Washington ways was that, once the scandal machinery got fully engaged, mere facts stood very little chance of influencing the story line.
Writing for mediamatters. org, Jamison Foser notes a 1997 Insight smear claiming that Clinton was auctioning burial plots in Arlington National Cemetery to the highest bidder. Despite no factual support and not a single named source, that one zipped from right-wing radio to The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and CNN before the White House proved it false.
But not this time. For reasons best known to themselves, several news organizations probed the Insight smear of Obama. Although Limbaugh and FOX News went big with the allegation, CNN and ABC News each dispatched correspondents to the Jakarta school that Obama attended at age 6. What they found was a normal, coeducational public school with students of several religions in attendance.
During the Jan. 22 broadcast of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” host Wolf Blitzer congratulated his own network.
“As rumors swirl,” he said, “we’re actually on the scene doing serious journalism in Indonesia. We’re finding out the facts.”
On his CNN program, “Reliable Sources,” Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, one of the straighter shooters, pointedly criticized Murdoch’s New York Post and FOX News for running the story.
Over the past 15 years, both Clintons, Al Gore, John Kerry and, most recently, former Ambassador Joe Wilson have been the objects of multiple unfounded, rightwing smear campaigns that arguably have determined the course of American politics as mainstream journalists apparently have often collaborated and at other times gazed thoughtfully off into ambient air.
Could a return to responsible journalism become the latest Washington trend ? Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so ?
Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online