I. CBS Uses Faux Outrage to Spread the Smear Two different news networks, part of two different corporate empires with two very different opinions of the Bush administration FCC---look at the way that they handle the Right Wing Lie
Barack Obama is a Muslim .
First, CBS. This is some of the sneakiest anti-Obama propaganda you will ever see. Watch it, then read the analysis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKdvTqF6xLoNote that the anchor starts off talking about a “rumor that won’t die down”. Well no duh!
How can it die down when you print the accusation across the CBS news screen in big bold letters? There it is, the same old lie that Obama was sworn in using a Koran, not a Bible and who could trust this kind of man? That is an old advertising reinforcement trick. Does CBS think we were born yesterday? If they were trying to debunk the rumor, it would have been sufficient to mention the rumor. They did not have to emblazon it across our retinas so that we would see it every time we blinked our eyes for the next 60 seconds.
In case you are not sure that this is RNC oppo, watch the next part closely.
John McCain is cleared of any complicity in the smear (picture of the old straight talking maverick, himself. How do we know that he is not propelling the rumors? Because CBS says he isn’t). Then, we are told that Michael Bloomberg is fed up and he is telling Jewish voters in Florida not to be swayed by the rumors. There is a problem here. The bigoted voters who are likely to be swayed by rumors that Obama is a Muslim are hardly likely to pay much attention to a man from NY whom the people at CBS have just proclaimed to be Jewish. Note the yamaka on that one guy. You don’t see those down at the bbq cook off in Hogwaller, Georgia, too often. “The rumor is false. Obama is a Christian” (Video of Obama proclaiming that he has been a member of the same Church for almost 20 years…)
Voice over “But another bit of Obama’s biography has now been called into question as well…” (for some reason we get childhood photos of the Senator with his relatives. Are they going to claim that he was adopted?) No, they show Obama’s first big ad, in which he talks about the types of legislation he has supported. And they call him a liar, repeating McCain camp charges that he didn’t really do what he said he did in the ads. Dean Reyonlds comes on and reads a memo from the McCain camp “That shows Obama’s lack of accomplishment. Apparently the meaning of passing legislation takes on a looser meaning when you have no real record to run on.” (Is the McCain camp paying him for this free counter ad?)
I chose this video, because it has been mentioned at Democratic Underground in a favorable way, because of Michael Bloomberg. However, CBS is doing Obama no favors. And why should they? Viacom, the parent company of CBS, has been out of compliance with federal media ownership rules since 2000, when they were ordered by the Clinton FCC to divest some of their television holdings. Rather than obey, they decided to invest in the George W. Bush administration. They invested in the Iraq War. They invested so heavily in Bush in 2004 that they buried Bradley’s story on WMDs and severed their ties with Dan Rather, the most recognized and respected TV reporter/anchor in America. They are second only to Fox News in the lengths to which they will go to curry favor with the Bush White House, because they know that the next Democrat in the White House will enforce the media rules which will require Viacom to trim its media empire and probably negate all the good will that Sumner Redstone has built up through eight solid years of kissing Dick Cheney’s nether regions. And that has got to hurt.
Note that CBS never actually said that Sen. Obama is a Muslim. They reported that a whole bunch of other people have been spreading the story ever since he entered the Senate----and then they called him a liar about something else, which is basically giving viewers license to say
If he lied about one thing, maybe he is lying about being a Christian.This is how the corporate media has been propelling several key Republican lies about Barack Obama since January 2007---
they pretend that they are denouncing the bad behavior of others, such as Fox News, Hillary Clinton, anonymous bloggers, when in fact they are merely repeating it again before a wider audience. That is what CBS did in this broadcast.
II. ABC and Jake Taper Attempt to Debunk an Obama is a Muslim Smear Now, here is an example of a different news network which belongs to a different corporate empire that does a proper debunking of an
Obama is a Muslim lie. I offer this to as a comparison with the CBS story above.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/from-the-fact-c.htmlABC’s Jake Taper wrote this in response to a Fox News atrocity which was done in response to a Jerusalem Post atrocity. (Making it doubly atrocious). Sen. Obama’s half brother was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post which put words in his mouth and came up with “his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people,
despite his Muslim background.” This is a ludicrous paraphrase, coming from a Muslim (we are supposed to believe this guy badmouthed his own religion?) which just begs any decent journalist to look at the actual interview.
Here is what
Malik said, “I don’t think that’s in any way going to be something to worry about. I myself am not speaking for him. But we are here, we love people in general. People love us. I myself love people who love me. You know, so, and I think it’s mutual. I can’t go in terms of Israel and Kenya and America, and so forth, you know, but based on what else I’ve heard him say and what I know of him as an individual, I don’t think Israel should worry too much, you know, about the connection. Because, I am a Muslim myself, and I don’t think that my being a Muslim has got anything to do with my brother being the President of the United States.”
Obama’s brother talks about his own Muslim background. Wow. And for this, the internet went wild and Fox News ran a story in which Brit Hume proclaimed that Obama’s brother had outed him as a Muslim.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200806180008http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/19/brit-hume-owes-barack-obama-an-apology-for-repeating-a-false-story-about-his-half-brother/From Taper’s article
But nowhere in there does Malik expressly say anything about Obama having a Muslim background.
And nowhere does he "confirm" anything about Obama having a Muslim background.
Malik refers to Obama having a "connection" to something, perhaps Islam, which could clearly be a reference to Obama's father.
This interpretation spreading throughout the blogosphere and cable news is just not supported by the facts. The paraphrase was sloppy, for such a sensitive subject, and Malik's quotes don't even come close to supporting any assertion that Obama himself has a Muslim background.
Snip
Mark Twain is said to have quipped, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
And that was before the internet. And cable.
Monica Crowley has repeated the Fox Story on the Laura Ingram Show
http://mediamatters.org/items/200806200006but so far no other MSM seems willing to run with it, maybe because ABC and Jake Tapper did such an effective job of debunking it. This shows you the difference between real journalistic outrage and
faux outrage which only pretends to be irate so that it can give greater coverage to the lie. When a story is really debunked, it smells so rotten that no one except the right wing wants to touch it.
ABC is owned by the Disney Corporation which has telecommunications issues with John McCain and the current Bush administration which are unlikely to be resolved except by a change of administration. I expect them to be unwavering in their support for the Democrats this year.
III. It Was Easy to Smear Obama When the RW Could Blame It on Clinton While I was doing research for the four part “The Press v. Hillary Clinton” and the three part “The Press v. Barack Obama” which covered the period from January 2007 through January 2008, I saw a nasty pattern. The Republican Party was already hard at work---before Sen. Obama every announced his candidacy---smearing him as a scary un-American angry Black Muslim. They did this in the right wing press, like Fox News, which Democrats never watch and on right wing talk radio to which we never listen and on right wing internet sites which we never visit, so some of it went under the radar. They also managed some mainstream media smears which they kept free of RNC fingerprints by having their right wing tools smear Obama----and declare that Clinton made them do it.
This
Hillary Smeared Obama and We Are Just Reporting It strategy was important, because there was no way you could get a reputable news network like NBC or CBS or a newspaper like the NYTs or WaPo to print stories about Obama attending a madrassa or being a follower of Louis Farrakhan. If they did that, they would be accused of bias, possibly even racism, a charge which would lead to a tremendous backlash which would threaten their reputation and possibly even survival as advertisers hurried to sever ties. The MSM could not allow itself to be caught behaving badly. No, they could only cover the story of
other people behaving badly. During the Democratic primary, "other people" became Hillary Clinton and surrogates.
Here are two of the major
Obama is a Muslim stories that the right wing was able to inflict upon the American people using this strategy.
From early 2007 ,
Insight a Moonie publication claimed that Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia for four years---and they said they got the story from Clinton, because we all know that if Clinton had such explosive material about a rival, she would put it in an obscure Moonie tabloid, right? Though CNN quickly debunked the story, the MSM propelled the smear by playing up the “we got it from Clinton” angle
ven though the Obama camp and Axelrod admitted right from the start that the story probably did not come from Clinton http://mediamatters.org/items/200701260014 In a January 20 New York Post article, Obama strategist David Axelrod denied that Obama attended a madrassa: "He was not raised as a Muslim, and he did not go to a madrassa. It is a complete contrivance, and its purpose is clear." Axelrod added that he did not "believe ... for a second" the idea that Clinton's camp was behind the allegation. The story also quoted Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson saying, "We have no connection to this story."
CNN, NBC, MSNBC and ABC plus Fox (of course) and newspapers propelled the story for a week right at the start of Obama’s campaign. Seven days on an absolute bullshit story. Everyone who covered it should have been docked a week's pay. All it did was create the impression that 1. Obama was hiding Muslim roots and 2. Hillary was a bitch if you believed any of it. If you refer to my first journal about “The Press v. Hillary Clinton Part I, The Media Fatwa Begins”
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/157You will find that at this same time, the MSM was portraying Clinton as a vicious shrew---a total witch---who would stop at nothing to destroy a political rival. This, before the race for president had even begun. This added a touch of realism to the story. It put it into context. What we writers call foreshadowing. People were being programmed to expect to see the dirt begin to fly. Soon they would
want to see mud flinging--nude mud wrestling even, since there was a woman involved. Presidential campaign as monster truck rally.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200701200003 From the January 19 edition of KSFO's Morning Show:
MORGAN: Well, it is big time finally watching what's going on as Hillary begins the character assassination of "Osama Obama."
And there, in a nutshell, was the MSM’s whole strategy for 2007 and early 2008. Hillary as “bitch”, Obama as “Osama”.
The Republicans did not even have to dirty their---or their nominee’s—hands.
Joe Conason should get an award for best journalistic intuition for the piece he wrote about the Insight Madrassa story for Salon. He called it
Ghosts of dirty tricks past:The right-wing smear campaign against Barack Obama, with its telltale twist of linking Hillary Clinton to the attack, is classic Watergate.http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/01/26/obama/ These false claims lacked any sourcing, but that didn't prevent the usual media miscreants from broadcasting them, from John Gibson on Fox's "The Big Story" and Rush Limbaugh down to Melanie Morgan and her sidekick at San Francisco's KSFO radio station. Just the usual modus operandi of the noise machine -- except for that telltale twist of smearing Clinton with responsibility for the attack.
Where could they have gotten that brilliant idea?
Performing a dirty trick on one Democratic presidential candidate in a way that would reflect blame on another Democrat was the specialty of the Watergate crew led by Hunt, which back in the early '70s included G. Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti, as well as a host of lesser goons and spies such as the ingénue Lucianne Goldberg.
I had a see a pattern to catch what was going on. Conason caught it the first time. What a reporter!
Despite the right-wing regression to such ugly tactics against Clinton and Obama, there was a moment of hope as well. Rather than simply repeat the charges and rebuttals as if each bore equal weight, CNN sent an actual reporter to Obama's old school, who demolished the tale -- and at the same time, the news network emphasized that there was no evidence whatsoever linking Clinton to the attack. If such old-fashioned journalism is the template for campaign coverage this year and next, the dirty tricksters could soon face the unforgiving scrutiny they have always deserved.
Oops. Looks like Conason overestimated his fellow journalists. The right wing kept smearing Hillary and smearing Obama until eventually some of that mud started to stick. By the same time next year, reporters were eating it up.
After a solid year of this, it did not matter how stupid the story was. Mainstream media journalists were falling all over themselves to feed the public the thinnest, most ridiculous variation of
Hillary begins the character assassination of "Osama Obama" they could find. And few of them were more ridiculous than the story which wore its phoniness like a badge of honor.
Matt Drudge edited a 60 Minutes interview and suddenly people you would have thought had more sense became big fans of Matt Drudge’s editing work. Who needed to see the
real interview that Hillary Clinton gave, when you could watch the distorted version that Drudge wanted you to see? Doesn’t everyone want to look at the world the way that the right wing wants them to see it? Isn’t that why Fox News has such sky high ratings? Because we all love right wing propaganda. It is so authentic.
Other MSM news outlets thought so.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200803050001 Discussing Sen. Hillary Clinton's answer to a question about whether she believed Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman said that Clinton's answer was "positively Nixonian in its pauses and innuendos." In fact, Clinton's first three words in response to the question -- "You don't believe that Senator Obama is a Muslim?" -- were, "Of course not."
Fineman needs to get Conason to refresh his memory about what Nixon and his gang did.
The Matt Drudge video was positively Nixonian. And the way that people--including journalists fell for it shows that they do not make the average reporter any smarter now than they did back in 1972. People still believe what they think their eyes and ears show them, even if they are told that what they have seen has been edited. Especially if the story they see is what they want to see. That is the power of suggestion.
Rashomon is true. William Blake wrote that “the truth can not be told so as to be understood and not be believed” but he overestimated people. You can not make people believe the truth if the truth is something they do not want to believe, because the smartest person can make himself too dumb to understand the truth rather than rock the little island of sanctuary he has built for himself to provide comfort in the troubling waters of the modern world. That is how you find engineers who are convinced that homosexuality is a mental illness. After a solid year of hearing the press condemn Hillary as every kind of she-demon, a lot of people wanted to hate her, especially those who supported a rival candidate. So, the Matt Drudge edited video seemed more real to them than reality---
More on the smear Obama and blame Clinton strategy here.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/162 IV. Obama Bashing In the General Election, Less Muslim More Character? The RNC is going to miss Hillary Clinton. For the moment, they are maintaining a faux Hillary presence on the internet, but I am not sure how much longer they can keep that up once the ex-candidate herself goes on tour with Sen. Obama. If they can not attribute the smears to her, that means that they will have to attribute them to someone else. And the someone else needs to be more than 6 degrees of separation removed from John McCain who is running as Mr. Clean.
So far, they have gotten a lot of mileage out of Fox News. The Rev. Wright story was the single biggest story of the primary season. However, there are only so many times that CBS and NBC and the Washington Post and the NYT can run headlines denouncing Fox News for claiming, once again, that Obama is a Muslim. Fox itself just isn’t that newsworthy unless you are Keith Olbermann.
In the end, if they want to attack Obama on issues which the corporate media will refuse to raise for itself----religion, race, ethnicity----the RNC will have to use its own right wing surrogates and its own conservative media or its own Swiftboat type groups. In order to get these attack ads covered by the MSM, they will have to commit media atrocities of such a caliber that John McCain will invariably be tainted by association--it won't matter how many disclaimers the pundits at CBS and NBC show before they air the video of Obama superimposed over Osama or whatever it is that Rove and Co. dream up. And McCain has much more to lose by going negative than Obama does. Obama can run as Anything Is Better Than Bush. McCain has only his phony-baloney character. Without that, he is absolutely naked (what a thought).
That is why I expect that we will see the MSM drop its efforts to propel the
Obama is a Muslim lie and begin focusing on the kinds of safer lies that it used in 2000 and 2004 against Gore and Kerry. You know, character stuff. I wrote about these lies in the third "Press v. Obama" journal
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5277320Specifically, those members of the corporate media who whore for the republicans will continue to suggest that Obama lacks experience (in contrast to McCain's extreme old age), honesty (in contrast to the "straight talker"), that he is a dirty trickster and typical Daley style politician. These tactics have also been well used during the past year, so members of the press are familiar with them. I suggest that DUers become aware of them. Just think of all the things that John McCain pretends to be---a maverick, straight talker, incorruptible, brave, all American hero---and that is what they will try to paint Obama as not being.
Go back to the CBS propaganda piece for a moment. Aside from the subliminal message about the Koran, the real dirt was the oppo from the McCain camp in which Obama was accused of being 1. a liar (honesty issue) and 2. having no accomplishments (experience issue). These are what I expect the corporate media to focus on, though they will sneak in the more sensational lies---whenever they can find someone else to blame.
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