Obama, Islam and the Washington Post

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 2:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Before y'all start: I've read the TPM posting, and it does have some substantive points to make; the Post article and its presentation aren't perfect. But TPM's criticism — that it's the "Worst Hit Piece of 2008" — seems to come from the perspective that the article is designed to inflict harm on Obama's campaign, and I didn't read the article that way at all.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 2:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

OK, starting with the fact that most casual readers of a newspaper only read the headlines, captions, and /maybe/ the first couple paragraphs of a story, the headline in question is egregiously tilted to the propagating untruths side of this 'story.'

Read it again: "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him"

>Oh, what? Obama has Muslim ties?<

While that may not be a deal-breaker for the more educated and culturally sensitive among us, fact is it will be a deal-breaker for many a Joe American who don't follow news or politics very closely (the O'Reilly Factor, or Daily Show for the matter, don't count as "closely")—it's likely that these are the same folks are the ones who pass a newsstand and read the headlines and maybe captions and consider themselves informed.

>Obama has Muslim ties. Enough for me. I guess Hillary will have to do. May be a woman, but a red-blooded 'Merican woman at least.<

Fact is, Obama has little more Muslim ties than most in the U.S. True, when he was a toddler, he attended an Indonesian school that was predominately Muslim—BECAUSE HE WAS IN INDONESIA. At age 6, he was in Catholic school studying the catechism.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/mus...

Should something you were associated with at age 3 be held against you a half-century later? Is it a big enough part of your life to state is a 'fact' in a headline?

This is nothing short of Reason No. 1 that copy editors have no business writing headlines.

(The Jdub has had its own issues with this many a time... most recently:
http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/hate_the_p... )

It's a relic of the past. Let the reporters writer the headlines. Perhaps more people read those than the reporter's own work, and if they go away with only a small fraction of the story, it should at least be an accurate small fraction of the story.

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 2:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Smerdy: I think you make a good point about headlines in general — the print headlines, which are necessarily restricted, don't have to be so narrow (and thus sometimes misleading) in the confines-free Web — though this one doesn't bother me to the same extent it does you.

Here's Obama, from the Post article:

"The day I'm inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently," he told another Iowa crowd. "Because I've got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth."

Maybe we're defining "ties" differently, but it seems like he's touting them on the campaign trail, no?

Do you think the Post article was a hit piece?

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 2:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

(And maybe this is a good place to say that, no, having "Muslim ties" shouldn't be a slur. I've got some, myself.)

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 3:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)

No, I don't think it was intended to be a hit piece. But, as 'they' say, the road to hell... And obviously it's the journalist's job to anticipate perception and address it before headlines hit the newsstand.

To address your point about the constraints of print headlines, I think any reporter should be able to write a long and short headline for every story they write, if not an intermediate headline, too. The long one would go online and report the fullest, relevant summary of the story, given that space isn't an issue. If it fits in print, too, so be it. Otherwise the short one is written and, at the very least, it's a better starting point for the copy editor to work with than whatever they come up with last-minute-style under the deadline gun.

Posted by Keith (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 3:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)

One problem is that in an effort to appear balanced, media almost always lend equal credence to a side of the argument that is questionable at best.

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 3:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Wasn't it Romney who kept "accidentally" calling Obama "Osama?" That probably didn't help, either.

Posted by gavon (Gavon Laessig) on November 29, 2007 at 3:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Joel, you ignorant slut...that the Washington Post put this on their front page and packaged it as a legitimate point of attack on Obama is lazy and indicative of what's wrong with political reporting in this country. And believe you me, I know a little somethin' somethin' about laziness and sloppy reporting...it's my fucking (there's my one "fuck" out of the way) stock in trade.

That they're giving so much ink to a blatant lie (not just a "rumor") and insinuating with their headline that Obama spending time in Indonesia as a child is tantamount to "Muslim ties" is salacious, sensational and certainly not news. It would be like saying "John McCain dogged by infidelity accusations" in regards to the 2000 smear campaign against him, when it should read "Baseless attacks against McCain denounced by all sides." I understand that it gets boring covering campaigns, but trying to inject false controversy into the race just for the sake of spicing things up is a Swift Boat redux.

I don't think that the story is a "hit piece" on Obama--it's titillation that can do real damage. That they're giving credence to a baseless attack (in the headline, at least) on the front page is exactly why the Swift Boat ads were so effective. The lie gets repeated ad nauseum, nobody bothers to really investigate the claim, it's presented as a "he said/she said" even though what "he said" is utter garbage, and it defines the narrative and media cycle until the media gets bored and moves on to something else just as shiny and distracting--but at that point the damage is already done and the media throws its hands up and offers a meek apology that's buried in the op-ed section.

That all said, I can't wait for the Rudy Giuliani extramarital-affair-paid-for-by-taxpayers story to blow up. That's a salacious, titillating campaign story that also just happens to be true. When good journalism and wangification collide, everybody wins.

And, Joel, you're not really an ignorant slut...you're a very well informed slut. (Is that SNL reference too obscure for our younger readers?)

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 4:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Well: Mainstream news organizations are almost never going to use the word "lies" on their own, not outside of a quote. Some of this is tempermental, as Keith points out — newsies are afraid of *looking* unbalanced and sometimes that results in some overcaution. Some of that is caution born of not wanting to pay lawyers to fight a libel lawsuit — "the claims are not supported by fact" is much easier to defend in court than "he lied" — and the first also a more demonstrable truth, whereas using the word "lies" gets to somebody's (unprovable) state of mind. It's a CYA fudge factor, but it's hardly viscerally satisfying in the face of untruths, I admit.

(There's also a "we report, you decide" mentality -- don't get angry at me -- where a lot of journalists really don't want to tell readers what to think about the facts at hand.)

But since you bring up McCain's experience in South Carolina in 2000: I don't really remember there being much, if any, mainstream news coverage of the racial smears that were used against him, except after the fact. The Washington Post didn't amplify it at the time; yet everybody agrees that the push polls, calls, and rumors pushing those smeard did, in fact, do a great deal of damage to McCain's campaign.

So if you're a news organization and these rumors — false and incorrect stories — are persisting, and seem to be affecting A) how the candidate campaigns and B) how some voters are perceiving the campaign, what's the correct course of action?

A) Not write about it, because that would amplify the falsehood even as you try to knock it down.

B) Write about it, so that citizens can see the facts on the table and make their own choices.

Ok, ok, that's a strawman choice. There's obviously choices to be made in the presentation of the material that can affect how it's received by the public. But I'm reading the bulk of the criticism — including yours, Gavon — to say that merely raising the issue perpetuates falsehoods. And as a media guy, I find that frustrating: It's an issue, even if it's a wrong and wrongheaded issue; it's a reporter's job to tackle it.

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 4:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Also: Didn't the word "rumor" used to have a negative connotation? As though a "rumor" was an unreliable and quite probably false piece of information? When in the world did calling something a "rumor" seem to give it credence?

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 4:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Interlude, where I address the use of the "f" word:

Go ahead people: I can't control what you say. I won't use it in this forum -- buying me a beer is another matter.

My main concern when I initially asked for a "dialing down" was tone, not the word itself: The comments section of this blog functions as my virtual living room, of sorts. I'm going to disagree with some of you, and some of you are going to disagree with each other, and I'm fine with that -- I obviously posted this particular blog item understanding that there'd be some opinionating going on.

But I want to keep disagreements civil so that we can all stay in the living room and keep talking to each other; I want this to be a safe place for some people who might otherwise stay out of the conversation. And sometimes deploying profanity in the cause of expressing disagreement can scare those people off.

I hope that makes sense. In any case, we now return to the discussion of why I'm wrong about the Washington Post.

Posted by chewyfally (Falestine Afani Ruzik) on November 29, 2007 at 5:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Hot damn! I'm Joel's Muslim tie! Woooot!

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 5:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Well, there's also a guy from the coffee shop... but you rank higher, I admit.

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 5:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The WaPo reporter speaks:

"I thought the facts that 1. these falsehoods persist and 2. Obama make mentions of his time living in a Muslim country on the campaign trail as part of his foreign policy were both worth remarking. I think the story makes clear, including in the candidate's own words, he is a Christian."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesm...

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 6:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"I'm reading the bulk of the criticism ... to say that merely raising the issue perpetuates falsehoods. And as a media guy, I find that frustrating: It's an issue, even if it's a wrong and wrongheaded issue; it's a reporter's job to tackle it."

Joel, you're misreading the criticism (at least mine, and i think Gavon's, too). I say, heck yeah, tackle the issue, but AS A REPORTER, not as some sort of mouthpiece for press releases and talking points. Don't say "Obama's Muslim ties"; do say "accusations of Obama's allegiance to Islamic extremism," etc. Because isn't that really what's being said by those who tout his "Muslim ties" as a negative?

My criticism (and I think Gavon's, since he mentions "in the headline, at least") is that the way the story is packaged and presented, it seems on its face to perpetuate all the LIES that the story itself may well deconstruct and defuse. If you're operating from the POV that people actually read (as it seems you do, and as I suspect most journalists do) then, sure, the piece is fine and journalists need not pity themselves for being caught in a catch-22. But if you consider that the headline carries much more import to the lion's share of readers than whatever paragraph 12 etc elaborates, then I hope you'll concede that the Post f*ed up in a big way when it ran this piece as it did.

If I run a story headlined "Joel Mathews may well be a pederast," and then take pains in the story to point out that those who claim as much have no more factual claim to stand on than Pigs Can Fly, can I the reporter really seek refuge in "I think the story makes clear..."?

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 7:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Smerdy: The headline that "Joel Mathews may well be a pederast" makes the allegation of wrongdoing.

The headline discussing "Muslim ties" doesn't make an allegation of wrongdoing, not on the face of things — unless we've decided to agree that knowing and knowing about Muslims (which, best I can tell, is what's meant here) constitutes or implies an act of wrongdoing. You ready to go there?

Surely you can see the distinction.

Let me back up and I'll concede: You're right -- a lot of people just read headlines and never get into the substance of the reporting. (Which, yes, is frustrating: Why the hell should we do all that reporting, then?) And that's why you'll probably see some throat-clearing coming out of the Washington Post over the next couple of days.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 7:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Sure, I'm ready to go there... To think that saying something akin to "Osama is down with the Muslims" isn't a negative in today's political climate is disingenuous at the very best. Like I said, the well educated and thinking individuals among us can honestly claim that we don't see it that way. But unfortunately not only the thinking and well educated get a vote.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 7:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

btw you can split hairs all you want about what legal allegations that headline (and my hypothetical one) makes.

I was trying to make the point that the headline is wide open to perceptions that are 180 degrees removed from fact.

If and when reporters begin trying to absolve themselves from propagating mistruths by resorting to lawyer-/politician-esque language, well, that'll be the day that I, too, stop reading the paper.

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 8:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I'll overlook your Freudian misspelling.

And I'll go back to the story: O-b-ama is making his *familiarity with the Muslim world* part of his campaign pitch. I'm not making this up. The Washington Post isn't making this up. That's not a salacious rumor. He's saying it himself.

Let me be clear about this again: OBAMA is saying that Obama has Muslim ties. And because he's smart, he's touting it as a positive.

The question, addressed by the story, is how those ties are being perceived by voters and distorted by those with an ideological axe to grind. And if we're so concerned about the plain meaning of words, well: If we should be calling lies lies, then shouldn't we be calling ties ties?

Let's deconstruct the headline, then, why don't we?

Original: "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him."

Rewritten: "Foes use verified facts as springboard for false and negative stories about him"

I'm not going to assume that you'll agree with that headline, but work with me here.

The problem here -- where I think we're getting hung up -- is that the stuff that's false (the rumors) don't really work without the stuff that's true (the fact that Obama did some growing up in a Muslim country; that he now says that experience will aid him as president). The untrue stuff has taken root among the true stuff. Journalistically, this makes for some tricky gardening; you can't uproot all the weeds willy nilly -- you've got to get down on your hands and knees and start separating them from the flowers verrrrry carefully.

It's an inelegant process, and it made in this case for an (admittedly) inelegant article.

Let me offer some questions here:

• Are the continued rumors and stories, which continue to have an affect on Obama's campaign -- false, though they may be -- newsworthy?
• If so, do you in the course of presenting the story and knocking down the false stories talk about the truth of Obama's background and how he uses it on campaign trail? Why

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 8:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)

... or why not? (Sorry, computer glitch.)

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 8:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Oh: And what headline do you write?

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 29, 2007 at 8:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)

And smerdy: I guess I don't think it's fair to suggest that anybody's trying to defend the propagating of mistruths and defending themselves with legalistic language. Let's face it: Every sentence in the English language is probably open to a dozen or more interpretations; if it didn't, we wouldn't need a U.S. Supreme Court. Journalists take the best shot they can and sometimes find out that it was received in a way they didn't begin to imagine.

Taking a little Occam's Razor here, what do you think was more likely:

• That the Washington Post news people -- not editorial people, but news people -- published a piece and headline they knew would be received as a "hit" on Obama?

• Or that they were trying to delve into some very real issues and found themselves surprised by the backlash?

To me, there's something telling here:

As far as I can tell, there's been no reaction by the Obama campaign to this story. (I'm writing at 8:16 p.m.CST - events may overtake this assertion.) When the first madrassa stories started popping up over the summer, his campaign countered them immediately, and the story was thus knocked down fairly quickly.

So far: Nothing. Unless I'm very wrong, it doesn't seem the campaign has read this piece the same way that others have.

And let me conclude all my pontificating with this: I might very well be wrong. Journalism is much closer to art than science; it's hard to get these things "right" because what that means is elusive, and a little different for everybody. It's not always easy.

Thanks for the conversation, folks.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 29, 2007 at 8:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Ha, oops.... The headline I'd write is:

"Is it true that oBama is terrorist?" OK, actually maybe something more like:

"Obama: Muslim or Muslim-wannabe?" etc

The story would then proceed to deconstruct his 3-year-old experience in a predominately Muslim school and how that does or does not have any bearing on his status as a candidate. I say he has no cards to play or defend in the Muslim-friendly arena, any more than Average Joe 'Merican.

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on November 29, 2007 at 11:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)

haven't read everything that came after Gavon's eff bomb, but wanted to comment.

smerdyakov point about the headline and this from Gavon:

"I don't think that the story is a "hit piece" on Obama--it's titillation that can do real damage."

some up my view. I'm not an Obama man, myself, but I found it to be pretty shocking. And when I mentioned the story to my parents tonight, they both said, "he's not muslim?"

They could have done without addressing the rumors and by that I mean not doing this "story" at all.

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on November 29, 2007 at 11:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

one thing to point out is what mediamatters brings up. the fact that the author only mentions that Obama denied the rumors, not citing the news stories that had debunked the myths, thus making it a "he said/he said" issue.

http://www.mediamatters.org/items/200711...

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on November 30, 2007 at 6:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Well, today's WaPo editorial cartoon pokes fun at the ... WaPo (thanks to Keith for e-mailing me). I think it's fairly extraordinary for a paper's editorial voice to criticize its news pages so clearly:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opi...

(Nov. 30 cartoon, in case you're looking at this in the future.)

Chris: I was wondering when you'd weigh in. Two things:

• I'm not sure what your story about your parents is supposed to prove. It sounds like they already thought inaccurate things about him, but that you think this somehow contributed to their confusion. Please explain.

• I agree that the story could've been strengthened by mentioning other debunkings, like the one CNN did over the summer — if you're going to mention how the charges originated, you should mention the response. I take the reporter at his word (above) that he thought Obama's words did the debunking by themselves, but that doesn't excuse him (or his editors) from the oversight.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on November 30, 2007 at 8:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)

My dad sent me this article

http://www.star-telegram.com/ed_wallace/...

before the Post story ran... but it seems more than a little relevant. Also check out its LONG headline!

"America’s ADD — Even when something isn’t correct, if you hear it repeated enough you can easily come to believe it. And, when 'facts' are 'updated' often enough, you are trained to forget the old ones."

Posted by padch (anonymous) on November 30, 2007 at 11:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)

So I just joined your blog to comment on the Obama story but I promise to read and investigaet the lawrence.com/blogs a little further after I vent my frustration. Here goes...

I fell in love with Obama after reading his autobiography following the Democratic convention in 2004. I have admired the man's charecter ever since and while I have always tended to voted Democratic in the past, I can wholeheartedly say I was an Obama fan before the whole presidential race entered into his portfolio.

That being stated I have been so angered by the Muslim rumors and have tried to calm myself by dismissing them as uneducated white southerners (spoken as a loneky Liberal in Texas) not having enough sense to know that just because you have a name like Obama and a middle name of Hussein that doesn't mean you are a Muslim. However when I heard about the WaPo story I was floored with frustration. It is beyond frustrating that if anyone would consult the own man's biography (written PRIOR to his presidential campaign) you would quickly see he is not a MUSLIM.

The part that is THE MOST FRUSTRATING and infuriating to me is that even if Barack was a Muslim, a man who has dedicated his life to community building, working with the poor and disenfrachised, public life etc comes as close to A JESUS led life as I've seen lately in any politician. SO maybe he is a MUSLIM secretly planted as Christian. Here's a theory he was planted in the madrassa by the Christians to secretly convert all the Muslims to Christianity. Seriously who cares what his religion is???? and why does the WaPo article portray Muslim rumors aa a bad thing for Obama. I've seen Christians, Evangelicals, Muslims, Aethisists, Scientologists etc all do horrible things but I'm more concerned with an individuals's character, actions and records and not what religion my next President is going to be. After all wasn't the basis for forming America for religious freedom??? seperation of church and state? what happened to that notion???

C

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on November 30, 2007 at 12:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)

joel, i didn't explain that point at all. must have been in nanotrance.

was just trying to point out the pervasiveness of the rumors. however, that could be an argument for doing the debunking story. but, as has been discussed here already, they botched the attempt and i think would have been better off not doing it.

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on November 30, 2007 at 12:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

FWIW, i should also add that my parents are republicans, but both like Obama. Even when they thought he was muslim.