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This is what I said about the "Obama is a Muslim" rumors in March
Just minutes ago the phone rang. It was CNN, a producer for one of their news shows. She had read the truth-challenged Washington Post story on the rumors about Barack Obama. She was looking for me because she expected that I, as the "journalist" Perry Bacon falsely represented me as doing, would claim that Obama was secretly a Muslim.
I explained to her that in the column I wrote that Perry Bacon quoted, I was actually discussing the fact that Obama was not a Muslim, and what the reaction might be in the Islamic world to the LA Times' claim that he had been registered a Muslim when attending grade school in Indonesia, but was a Muslim no longer. And that was that: the CNN producer, who was very kind, polite, and professional, went on in search of someone else who would say that Obama was a Muslim.
Meanwhile, if CNN would ever like to discuss the activities, both violent and non-violent, of global jihadists and Islamic supremacists, which I believe are ultimately much more newsworthy and more far-reaching in their implications than are rumors about Obama, I'm right here, just another phone call away.
Finally, I think this particular phone call, and the producer's expectations, are a fine small example of how the inaccuracy, carelessness, and lack of interest in the truth of "reporters" such as the Washington Post's Perry Bacon -- of whom there are so many -- can lead people astray.
ADDENDUM: I just added a link to a Hot Air video I made last March, in which I explicitly dismiss the "Obama is a Muslim" rumors as "hooey." But why should we expect a journalist from the Washington Post to have done his homework?
Posted by Robert at December 3, 2007 8:46 AM
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Perry Bacon is najis!
Posted by: Shy Guy![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 3, 2007 9:17 AM
Her name?
Posted by: Hugh at December 3, 2007 9:35 AM
The truly disturbing part in all this is that this appears to be more of the same. A major news media outlet endeavoring to manufacture the news. Their interest is not reporting the news and letting the chips fall as they may but creating news with a particular slant. I guess Jack Nicholson was right, we can't handle the truth. Or at least CNN doesn't think so...
Shalom,
Theosebes
at December 3, 2007 9:37 AM
It's CNN. What do you expect?
Posted by: RoobartSbunsar at December 3, 2007 9:37 AM
Robert,
Is there a body to which you can make a complaint? In the UK, we have the Press Complaints Commission which - in theory, anyway - ensures that newspapers toe the line, observe ethical guidelines and other high-minded stuff.
This gentleman Mr. Bacon has clearly got his facts completely wrong and therefore you are well within your rights to ask for a retraction and/or an apology, surely?
Or do you have better things to do with your time?
Posted by: A Nonny Nonny at December 3, 2007 9:41 AM
"so you see, if you read what I actually wrote, you'll see never did I say that Obama is a Muslim..."
snip, snip, snip
"Today, we spoke by phone to renowned anti-Muslim hate-monger, Robert Spencer..."
cue bad photo with subtitle and streaming transcript:
"I say that Obama is a Muslim".
"There you have it, folks, can politics get any lower?"
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at December 3, 2007 10:01 AM
To the hapless CNN employee, told to get out and find someone "from the right" who "claims that Obama is a Muslim" and to that employee's cynical and malign and dangerous employer:
Of course if you are trying to find someone who claims Osama is a Muslmi, you will be able to. There is always someone to be found who will claim anything. But what is the point? Would that someone be listened to, offer any proof, have any standing anywhere? Or do you simply want to find such a person, after what apparently will be an extensive search, and then present that finding as an example of what is, in the CNN presentation, some kind of mainstream or at least significant view, when your own difficulty at locating such a person shows how inaccurate that would be?
Posted by: Hugh at December 3, 2007 10:07 AM
"And that was that: the CNN producer, who was very kind, polite, and professional, went on in search of someone else who would say that Obama was a Muslim."
Perfectly put and exactly right.
Posted by: alexon at December 3, 2007 10:54 AM
Rumor to spread:
A large chunk of Time-Warner, which owns CNN, was years ago bought by PrinceAlwaleed bin Talal, and no doubt other Saudis, and other Arabs, especially from the Emirates, also own Time-Warner stock, as they do stock in News Corp and other media companies.
Why should anyone take stock of what CNN reports about Islam and Islam-related matters, when so much CNN stock, essentially, has now been taken by the Saudis and other Muslim Arab Defenders of the Faith?
Remember, it's just a rumor. There is no truth, none whatsoever, in the remark that is alleged to have been made the present Saudi king, Abdullah, then merely the head of the Saudi National Guard, back in November 1979, when he supposedly told the Jordanian newspaper "Rai" that "we would have liked to buy all the Western media, but so far have been unsuccessful." No truth at all to it. Go ahead -- ask the government, or ask MEMRI, to look into that interview by Abdullah back in November 1979. You'll see that it is entirely false.
And do check on those rumors of heavy buying into CNN through its parent, and into other Western media, and you'll find it's all just a slanderous rumor. Just like that slanderous rumor being spread by those "right-wing" commentators, such that "Osama is a Muslim." Robert Spencer has been characteristically clever, diabolically clever, in the way he helped spread the rumor. He actually claimed that there was no evidence that Obama was a Muslim, and wondered what Muslims would make of him, because he had had a Muslim father and was now a devout Christian -- would they regard him as an apostate?
Can you imagine a cleverer way for Spencer to insinuate the very reverse -- that in fact Obama Barack must be a Muslim?
And look at how they are now spreading rumors about Saudi financial interests helping to limit the coverage, and comprehension, of Islam, in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world?
Rumors. Nonsense. Lies.
Posted by: Hugh at December 3, 2007 11:39 AM
Perhaps Glenn Beck can get to the bottom of this.
(eyes rolling)
Posted by: kevin at December 3, 2007 12:27 PM
Since it was CNN all they have to do is have another 'accident' and put his picture on screen with a label saying he is a Muslim. they can then apologize.
Or better yet Jihadist.
Who needs to investigate when typos will do.
Why don't they question Hooper about his damning statement? That would answer a lot more questions and maybe even provoke some.
hey it worked well with Hugo C.
Posted by: Aunt Bea at December 3, 2007 12:54 PM
Next Hugh will be spreading that horrid rumor that the Teddy Bear in Somolia is really the 12th Imam.
OT Ga Gov Purdue prayed for rain and the Ga/Al area got rain. Yesterday the Muslims in Atlanta prayed for rain and the one to two inches that was coming with the current cold front.. disappeared!
Posted by: Aunt Bea at December 3, 2007 1:03 PM
Looks to me like CNN is gunning for Hitlery to win the Prez next year and will manipulate the news to help make that happen. Each station has their own agenda and all do it, thus the reason we can't trust the news.
Posted by: Bonniea at December 3, 2007 3:58 PM
Taking aside Robert's beef with the journalist (and this is coming from Brit who doesn't have all the skinny on the US election campaign): surely if he was born a Muslim (Muslim Father) - he can then really only be either a Muslim or an Apostate?
Or am I getting this all wrong?
Posted by: Un:dhimmi at December 4, 2007 2:32 AM
"The truly disturbing part in all this is that this appears to be more of the same. A major news media outlet endeavoring to manufacture the news. Their interest is not reporting the news and letting the chips fall as they may but creating news with a particular slant." posted by Theosebes
This happens in all major media around the world, not only in the Washington Post. Another example of misreporting in the same Washington Post was mentioned in this article:
"Internationally influential media like the Washington Post copied from an Islamist website rumors about Hindu provocations behind the Godhra carnage, falsely claiming a Gujarati journalist as source, and never publishing a correction when the journalist in question denied ever having put out such a story. With such media, who needs rumors?"
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.org/articles/fascism/godhra.html
at December 4, 2007 11:59 AM
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