It's nice to see CNN do their job and investigate rather than spread the joy of smearing politicians and candidates with unsupported assertions, rumors, and innuendos. I just saw Wolf give a low down on this about 1/2 ago on the Obama's education smear.
More below
By now you might be familiar with the Insight.com story (run by the Moonie Times) on Obama's education in Indonesia. To recap, rumors were spread that Obama's childhood education of 4 years in a Madrassa or Muslim seminary in Jakarta, Indonesia. Madrassas have connections to fundamentalist Muslim groups from Saudi Arabia, as the smear goes.
But Insight got a double bonus for their smear.
Not only did they tag Obama as a Muslim in disguise, but it was Hillary who anonymously pointed his background out:
Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?
This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.
An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.
"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."
I refuse to link the trash article for obvious reasons.
As most stories go like this, it gets spread around by the Right Wing Noise Machine. Nevermind that it was entirely built up on "anonymous" sources and had no substance in the first place. That never matters to the Right Wing blowhards. Well Rupert Murdock got quick wind of it and published the smear in his NYPost (again I refuse to link the bullshit smear).
Then John Gibson of Faux News ran with it and had Terry Holt (Rethuglican strategist) on to help bolster the smear (again I refuse to link it). I will, however, link our friends at Newshounds:
http://www.newshounds.us/...
Then, of course, came the hammer. Faux News realized how far out their Moonie friends were on the smear, even for them and issued an "apology":
But Monday morning, "Fox and Friends" distanced themselves from the story. Co-host Brian Kilmeade noted that the Obama campaign "wanted to correct the record" and insisted that Obama had never attended a radical Islam school. Kilmeade added that the Clinton campaign also called and insisted they had no one researching Obama's background.
"There was a firestorm created over that so we just want to say that's the story. The Obama camp was upset so we hope they're not now," he said.
Then co-host Gretchen Carlson pleaded with Obama to come on the show because Fox News will be the "home" for all the information on candidates in the 2008 election. "So come back back, Senator Obama," she said.
Then co-host Steve Doocy added that, "We're just being fair. His camp said the 'Insight Magazine' article [was] wrong. We're just putting that out there."
So what exactly are they saying? Does Fox News believe the article and their story based on it were wrong? Or are they just giving equal time to the people who were referenced in the article and their story? It's impossible to tell.
The "Fox and Friends" co-hosts did not clearly apologize for an error. Kilmeade's comments sounded like an apology, but Doocy sounded like Fox was merely offering a chance for the people named in the stories to comment.
Fox should have sought out comment before airing the story in the first place, but the "fair and balanced" network didn't.
Howie Kurtz also had a few interesting points to make on the concept of anonymous sources.
Then along comes Wolf and CNN, doing what I hope will be a continuing trend this election cycle: an actual investigation into baseless assertions:
JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.
Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.
Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and step-father and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.
Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.
He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."
The investigation goes further into detail as Senior International Correspondent John Vause was sent to examine the school in which Obama attended:
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.
"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."
Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
I know we're all shocked by this turning up nothing shy of deliberate smear. I have to admit, however, that there's almost a sense of genius if this smear were to have any more legs - I mean how else could one take down the top two presidential Democratic candidates by turning one against the other like that? Regardless, it was just too far out there, even for Faux and Murdock.
Hopefully this is a good sign of things to come from our press at CNN. Investigations should be mandated for any unsupported assertions made against all candidates.
Update: Very much appreciated for being Recommended!