Front Page Falsehoods
(Yes, those of you playing "Holiday News Bingo," feel free to block off the center top square.)
And one of the minor little media flurries we're mucking through? A dubious Washington Post front page story last week entitled "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him."
According to to The Politico the piece has become a huge point of contention:
The Washington Post is accustomed to criticism of its coverage from the right and left blogospheres, but a Nov. 29 front page story about Barack Obama's rumored Muslim ties came with a twist: Many voices within its own newsroom joined in the firestorm…The Columbia Journalism Review folks jumped in as well:Since Thursday, there have been angry e-mails, Hamilton said, and allegations that the Post is swift-boating the Illinois senator by discussing rumors at length, without mentioning whether they've been thoroughly discredited by other media.
In the front-page piece, [author Perry] Bacon muses over how the chances of Barack Obama getting elected president might be affected by the fact that he's not Muslim. Seriously. To build his case, Bacon stumbles artlessly through all manner of rumor, innuendo, and xenophobic smear—never bothering to refute any of it, even though there is plenty of well-documented evidence to knock down much of this stuff.And even the Washington Post's own media critic/reporter Howard Kurtz chimed in on an online chat with readers, adding:
Post editors say they were trying to knock down the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor, but I don't believe the piece was well executed. It didn't read like a debunking piece. There was too much about Obama "denying" or "disputing" allegations rather than just branding them false.It's getting to be crunch time in the primary process – we're t-minus a month from the starting gun here – so allow this writer to hammer home a previously made point.
Note to political reporters and editors: If you are going to get in the business of "setting the record straight," one of the best techniques to apply is to not restate the original rumor or falsehood. A University of Michigan and the Washington Post's own Shankan Vedantam speaks to this phenomenon.
(Click to read "Myth-Busting Mistake.")
Reporters are trained to offer the two sides to a story. It's the foundation of objectivity. It's downright Hegelian, with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But when you are reporting the mistruths and rumors and downright lies being tossed around in a political campaign, they don't deserve equal play with the truth.
How, then, should reporters deal with such things? I mean, you can't just leave rumor-mongering out there unaddressed. But reporters can combat this information warfare by through elliptical reference to the original falsehood, leading into the truth like "Despite false claims about his beliefs, Barack Obama is a congregant of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illiniois."
The reporters are the referees here. And we're here to maintain a fair fight. Any punches below the belt or after the bell should be penalized. They shouldn't be dignified or validated through repetition.