The Washington Post story today about the rumors swirling around Barack Obama that he’s a closeted Muslim raise interesting questions about media responsibility-specifically, where is the line between trafficking in rumors and reporting the news?
In a similar but unrelated vein, I’m often wondered where we draw the line in reporting on some of the more eccentric things that come out of Pat Robertson’s or (the late) Jerry Falwell’s mouths? Is every attack on Tinky Winky news? When James Dobson implies that SpongeBob SquarePants is gay, is it news, or does it only lend attention to something that’s so absurd it should be ignored?
Back to Obama. His middle name is Hussein. His grandfather was a Muslim. He attended an elementary school in Indonesia that critics say was a madrassah. For the record: he’s a member of the United Church of Christ, as Dan Burke noted here earlier.
Most of the rumors-and they are just that, rumors-come from the conservative press. They find new life on blogs and message boards. Obama himself has knocked this one down repeatedly, but some just refuse to believe him. From The Post:
The rumors about Obama have been echoed on Internet message boards and chain e-mails.
Bryan Keelin of Charleston, S.C., who works with an organization of churches there, posted on an Internet board his suspicion that Obama is a Muslim. “I assume his father instructed him on the ways of being a Muslim,” said Keelin, who described himself in an interview as a conservative Republican who will vote for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
“The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out,” says one of the e-mails that was posted recently on a blog at BarackObama.com, the campaign’s Web site, by an Obama supporter who warned of an attempt to “Swift Boat” the candidate. “What better way to start than at the highest level, through the President of the United States, one of their own!”
Another e-mail, on a site called Snopes.com that tracks Internet rumors, starts, “Be careful, be very careful.” It notes that “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim,” and that “since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.”
So here we have the MSM-the venerable Washington Post, no less-repeating an untrue rumor that found new life on Snopes.com of all things. Is that responsible? Perhaps, although I was thought newspaper stories should be based on facts, not rumors.
Is it necessary? Unfortunately, probably yes, because once a story is out there (however true or untrue), it’s a story nonetheless, and writing about those stories is how we earn our paycheck.
That said, I’m still not happy about it.
