Today, AP reporter Nedra Picker gives all of us a lesson in how to deliver a smear against a political opponent without actually telling a bald-faced lie. Her article is a wonderful display of journalistic weaseling and rampant bias, made more evident because it took such skill to craft.
The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against “whitey” in a diatribe at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would be used to bring down Obama’s candidacy this fall.
I have to hand it to her. She walks right up to the point of lying, but never steps over it. Yes, it’s true that conservative bloggers “circulated” the rumor. What she fails to mention is why those bloggers and Rush mentioned the rumor in the first place. Every single blog entry I read on the rumor said one or more of three things: 1) that the rumor wasn’t worth taking seriously until the rumormonger actually released the videotape he said he had, 2) that the rumor was not true, and 3) that the person who started and spread the rumor was an incredibly untrustworthy supporter of Hillary Clinton whose predictive powers were such that he wrote a New York times op-ed about how terrorism wasn’t such a big deal two months before 9/11.
The name of the guy who started and pushed the rumor is Larry Johnson. He was a deputy director for the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism in the Clinton administration. He’s not tough to find on the internet. I imagine that even Nedra Pickler can use Google. It would have been honest of her to at least mention his name. But honestly was not her intention.
The article is a hack job aimed at defusing the tension between the Clinton and Obama camps while making sure voters believe that conservatives were laying the lumber to Obama. It is mandatory for party unity be preserved if the Democrats and their MSM tools have any hope of winning in November. So, this article is incredibly necessary.
The truth of the matter is that even though it is impossible to say that some conservative blogger somewhere didn’t swallow the rumor whole and pass it along to his friends, it is completely dishonest for Ms. Pickler not to mention that the vast bulk of conservative bloggers either did not mention the rumor at all, were extremely skeptical and recommended that we wait for proof of the rumor, or dismissed it as the desperate ravings of a man who would do nearly anything to be relevant in political circles once more.
Pickler’s report isn’t a lie but it is a disgusting smear written with great skill. Take this paragraph, for example.
Michelle Obama has often been the target of conservative attacks, prompting Obama to demand his rivals “lay off my wife.” Much of the criticism came from her comment that her husband’s campaign has made her proud of her country “for the first time,” a remark that inspired a Tennessee Republican Party Web video questioning her patriotism.
See how this ties the Obama statement not just to conservatives but to this specific rumor? Then, she ties in a completely valid criticism about a statement Michelle Obama made in a campaign speech that was captured on videotape so that criticism looks as tawdry as the unfounded rumor. That’s a nice touch that not only reinforces the whole “conservatives are responsible for the rumor” theme and helps defuse a valid and damaging criticism against Obama and his wife.
I must say, if the Obama campaign hasn’t slipped Pickler a few bucks already, it certainly ought to. She has skill and she’s obviously not concerned about selling her journalsitic integrity down the river for a piddling amount of money.
She’s not the only one. Note the final paragraph of this op-ed by John Naughton of the UK’s Observer who says the rumor “whirls around the echo-chamber of the paranoid, right-wing blogosphere, with the odd whisk from Fox News reporters, until it reaches hysteria”. He offers no evidence for this assertion. Indeed, there is no proof he could offer because it didn’t happen. And his mention of Fox news is a real laugh beause the person who first brought up the rumor there was a Democratic pundit who went so far as to call the rumor fact.
See also Jay Carney, reporter for Time and occasional talking head on MS_NBC (the network so in the tank for Obama that it reportedly gave Tim Russert the heebie-jeebies). Carney went one step farther than Pickler and pretty much laid the rumor right on the table before he blamed the whole thing on conservatives. Ace has gone so far as to call Carney a liar for not even mentioning Johnson’s name. I’m not sure I’d say that, though you could sure as hell make a case that not doing so is a serious lie of omission.
From where I sit, though, Nedra Pickler’s article is worse. Not only is it the very same smear that is whirling around the echo-chamber of the elitist, with the odd push by MS-NBC and the AP, left-wing media until it reaches hysteria (who goes by the name of Keith Olbermann, by the way) but it also has the advantage of placement. Not many people, a couple hundred or so, likely saw Jay Carney on MS-NBC. Hundreds of thousands of people will see this AP article since it will end up being reprinted in city and country newspapers just like other AP articles. It won’t be filed under “opinion”. It’ll be stuck in with the rest of the national news and hundreds of folks who have no idea what the rumor really was will end up seeing how conservatives were spreading a mean story about a helpless candidate’s wife.
I’d say at this point that the Obama campaign doesn’t owe Pickler a check. They owe her the job of Press Secretary. They’d be hard-pressed to find someone willing to dance on the edge of a lie with such skill and aplomb. If she’s do it for them for nothing today, imagine how well she’d deliver their smears if she was working for them!
UPDATE: Welcome, to Michelle Malkin readers.
For the rest of you who haven’t seen her post on this, she has a chunk of transcript from Rush’s show. You will probably not be surpised to know that he, also, was skeptical of the rumor. She concludes:
Not long ago, there was no way to fight back against the MSM monopoly. Their word was scripture. This is why they hate Fox News, Rush, and the conservative blogosphere. This is why they seize on every opportunity, large and small, to discredit the Right. And this is why the fight over the (Un)Fairness Doctrine affects us all. The smear masters and liberal water-carriers who pass for journalists want their monopoly back. Without government intervention, they can’t reclaim it.
Exactly right. This story really isn’t about poor mistreated Michelle Obama. It’s about hanging all the dirty tricks that were played by Democrats during the Democratic primaries on Republicans.
UPDATE 2: Welcome to readers of Bill Hobbs. Bill’s right. The “Proud” video that used Michelle Obama’s campaign speech never did question her patriotism. As I recall, it didn’t say anything about her at all.
Welcome Hot Air readers! Get used to this kind of stuff from the MSM, folks. They have a lot of stuff they did to each other in the primaries they need to unload on us. This is just the first dump truck load. It’s going to get a lot nastier the closer we get to November. We might as well start bookmarking links and printing out quotes now for when the next load shows up.
Welcome also, readers of The American Pundit.
While you’re all here, why not check out what a pretty big leftist group thinks killed the Boy Scouts in Iowa. It’s also been “oil week” as I’ve been looking at who’s getting shiny new refineries, how John McCain still doesn’t get the energy problem, and how the MSM is doing its darndest to help push us into a recession. Also, a challenge to John McCain on earmarks. Think he’ll take it up?
If you like what you see, stick around a while, spend some time in the comment section, and visit one of the upper right links in the sidebar. Every bit helps keep me writing.
Tags: Barack Obama, Media Bias, Michelle Obama
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“Every single blog entry I read on the rumor said one or more of three things: 1)… 2)… 3)…”
Don’t forget 4) Copious drooling over the tantalizing possibility that it was true.
Rumors have a momentum of their own, in direct correlation to the bad faith of those who insist on repeating them, no matter who started them.
spoots, that’s nonsense. Do you even read the links I post here?
There is no way I’m only the third commenter here….
It’s true, TWP.
I”m not quite sure why, but very few folks who come around actually leave comments. I have a few tried and true commentors whom I love having around (yeah, spoots, even you) but I’d love to have some more.
How about you? You have my invitation to visit a lot more and leave comments like Johnny Appleseed!
[...] news sources circulating this smear: (1) Time magazine, (2) the New York Times, (3) the AP, (4) the Guardian, and now ABC. Not a single one has so much as mentioned Larry Johnson. “In [...]
I have to agree with you on this, Jimmie. In fact, I spent 2 threads over on my blog chiding Johnson and his unhinged band of Hillary supporters for shouting about it without puttin’ up.
However…
I know everyone on your side wants to give Rush the pass on his mention of it, and I suppose that’s valid. Hannity, on the other hand, played right into the spread by mentioning, on more than one occasion on his radio show, that he could not “confirm or deny” that he had such tape in his possession. Certainly there should be some responsibility for all this laid in his lap as well.
Perhaps so, Chen.
The fact remains that this was a Democratic rumor, first and foremost, and that the vast majority of conservative commentators and bloggers, Rush included, were either skeptical or dismissive of the whole thing.
If you want to hit Hannity on what he said, that’s fine. He deserves the licks.
The Obama people are still patently wrong about their accusations and the MSM is negligent for not doing the five minutes’ worth of research it would take to find out the truth. As I said, what Obama is doing is pernicious because he’s effectively allowing the MSM to unload all the dirty stuff that Democrats did to each other during the primaries on the Republicans. If he had any guts, he’d just tell the truth. He doesn’t appear to have quite that much courage on this, though.
You might have to remind me of Obama’s public comments on this, but like you said, it’s true that the rumor ‘circulated’ through the rightosphere and talk radio, perhaps to the point that it wouldn’t have hit reporters’ radar screens had it remained in the romper room over at No Quarter. So I guess it’s the classic question about whether the rumor starter is more culpable than the ones who give the rumor legs. Should Obama come out and say “Oh by the way, the rumor was started by the same crazy Hillary backers that accused me of giving her the finger when I scratched my face, and not the conservative blogs”? I dunno.
Oh, and one more thing..
Maybe you should mention the “Bush Lied” post too. I think you need some help over there.
BTW- It’s worth noting that Obama mentions LJ on his “fight the smears” site.
Chen, you notice how the only party mentioned there is the GOP and how Larry Johnson is a “blogger” as opposed to, say, a former high-ranking Clinton Administration official or a noted Democratic blogger and Clinton supporter. Talk about a sleazemeister.
How, exactly, did it “circulate”? You really have to stretch your offense-o-meter to say that “Here is the rumor which is being pushed by a Democratic opponent of Barack Obama. It looks to be without basis and I don’t believe it is true” is a “smear”.
Just go with the simpler answer: Obama wants to pin this on conservatives because it wouldn’t do to tell the truth about it.
Oh c’mon Jimmie. They link to the post, and anyone with a pair of firing synapses can click the “about the author” tab.
Like I said, the rumor could have stayed in the confines of the No Quarter blog or Hillbuzz (which they also link to), but once it his the airwaves of EIB and Fox it got massive exposure. One group is responsible for the rumor starting, the other is responsible for it spreading and ultimately culminating in some reporter giving it credence by asking him about it. The “smears” website addresses both.
The idea of the site is to debunk the rumor, not to give a play-by-play of how it got to where it is IMO.
Chen, you have to know that the person who kicked off the rumor on Fox was also a Democrat, Bob Beckel.
It’s a simple thing to report that Larry Johson, who has been a vocal Hilary Clinton supporter, started and fed the rumor, that it was broken on national television by a Democratic pundit and that conservative bloggers and Rush Limbaugh were openly skeptical and/or dismissive of the rumor. Heck, several of the biggest conservative bloggers didn’t even mention the rumor until it was already being widely discussed in the MSM. Michelle Malkin is one of those. Ditto Charles Johnson.
If Obama’s site was interested in truth, it would have mentioned Johnson’s prominent Democratic connections as quickly as it mentioned the “GOP”. Of course, the politics of the situation and the chance to pin the smears on conservatives is jsut to tasty to pass up, truth be damned.
Yea I’ll concede that Obama’s people could have mentioned Beckel on the “smears” site, sure.
Well, I dunno. The only blogs they linked to were those of Hillary supporters. In fact, I could just as easily make the argument that the Obama site leaves out the Rush and the “conservative blogs”, unlike those stories in the media (who made no mention of Johnson).
So, bottom line I think is that I agree with you on what the media has done here and I’ll say that the Obama campaign did what he had to do to address this particular rumor in relatively minimalist fashion. They could have mentioned everyone who even mentioned the tape (including Hannity, Beckel, and any other blogger, including myself I suppose), but to me it looks like the idea was to flatly state that the tape doesn’t exist; mission accomplished and move on.
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