DarrinS
04-28-2011, 10:52 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/business/media/28birth.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
The facts about Barack Obama’s birth never wavered. But the more the fraudulent theories were debated and dispelled in major news media outlets, the more people seemed to believe them.
The conspiracy theories were promulgated on the Internet and by fringe publishers in the early days of the Obama presidency, and they were encouraged by right-wing radio and television hosts and, more recently, by Donald J. Trump, who is toying with a Republican run for president.
The theories asserted that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, and is therefore not eligible to be president. In waves of media coverage — the vast majority of it critical of the so-called “birther” position — reporters tried to debunk those theories. But opinion polls found that doubts among Americans about his citizenship grew over time, as if the very fact of the debate caused the issue to fester in more minds.
“It seemed to really be getting traction in the polls,” said Mark Whitaker, the managing editor of CNN Worldwide. That, he said, was why CNN dispatched a camera crew to Hawaii last week to fact-check the conspiracy theories, something it had done three years ago, when Mr. Obama first released legal proof of his eligibility while running for president.
Mr. Whitaker said he thought the poll numbers were a primary reason why the White House released Mr. Obama’s long-form birth certificate on Wednesday. But the debunked theories are likely to persist in some circles.
“There is a veritable fantasy industry at work online and in the book publishing industry; there are dollars to be made,” wrote David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, on Wednesday. He said it was “plainly true” that persistent rumor-mongering surrounding the president is “designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.”
Some conservative Web sites have delighted in the perceived distrust in the president and his origins. “It is important to remember there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved,” Joseph Farah, the editor of one such site, WorldNetDaily, wrote Wednesday. His site had dozens of articles related to Mr. Obama’s birth on its home page.
A book by Jerome Corsi to be published in mid-May, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President,” raced to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list last week after the Drudge Report featured it prominently. On Wednesday it was ranked No. 35 on the ever-changing list.
Most in the news media do not share Mr. Farah and Mr. Corsi’s view. There was distaste evident in the voices of television anchors while they talked about the citizenship issue on Wednesday; the MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer, reading feedback from viewers, said many were “angry at the media for even covering the Trump birther nonsense.”
At the White House, the NBC correspondent Chuck Todd wondered aloud if Google and its ilk — which enable instant access to all manner of information — cannot be “starved,” then how should the media handle “crazy lies?”
Mr. Todd said on NBC that “the ability to get a conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it’s so much easier today than it was even 20 years ago, 10, 5 years.”
Most segments of the media kept the so-called “birther” movement at arm’s length when it emerged in the early months of the Obama presidency. By then, legal proof of Mr. Obama’s birth had already been released and groups like FactCheck.org had verified its authenticity.
But murmurs on Internet forums led to whispers on talk radio. Some hosts shrugged it off, but others, like Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs, questioned why the long-form birth certificate had not been released.
Only after Mr. Trump spoke out did it become a major topic for the news media. Fox News Channel commentators, who had rarely invoked the issue, started bringing it up, as did their guests; Sean Hannity, Fox’s 9 p.m. host, asked repeatedly in March, “Why can’t they just release the birth certificate?”
Indexing of last week’s news coverage by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that of the three main cable news channels, MSNBC hosts spent substantially more time talking about the citizenship issue than those on CNN or Fox News. What were they saying? That the theory was ludicrous.
The facts about Barack Obama’s birth never wavered. But the more the fraudulent theories were debated and dispelled in major news media outlets, the more people seemed to believe them.
The conspiracy theories were promulgated on the Internet and by fringe publishers in the early days of the Obama presidency, and they were encouraged by right-wing radio and television hosts and, more recently, by Donald J. Trump, who is toying with a Republican run for president.
The theories asserted that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, and is therefore not eligible to be president. In waves of media coverage — the vast majority of it critical of the so-called “birther” position — reporters tried to debunk those theories. But opinion polls found that doubts among Americans about his citizenship grew over time, as if the very fact of the debate caused the issue to fester in more minds.
“It seemed to really be getting traction in the polls,” said Mark Whitaker, the managing editor of CNN Worldwide. That, he said, was why CNN dispatched a camera crew to Hawaii last week to fact-check the conspiracy theories, something it had done three years ago, when Mr. Obama first released legal proof of his eligibility while running for president.
Mr. Whitaker said he thought the poll numbers were a primary reason why the White House released Mr. Obama’s long-form birth certificate on Wednesday. But the debunked theories are likely to persist in some circles.
“There is a veritable fantasy industry at work online and in the book publishing industry; there are dollars to be made,” wrote David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, on Wednesday. He said it was “plainly true” that persistent rumor-mongering surrounding the president is “designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.”
Some conservative Web sites have delighted in the perceived distrust in the president and his origins. “It is important to remember there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved,” Joseph Farah, the editor of one such site, WorldNetDaily, wrote Wednesday. His site had dozens of articles related to Mr. Obama’s birth on its home page.
A book by Jerome Corsi to be published in mid-May, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President,” raced to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list last week after the Drudge Report featured it prominently. On Wednesday it was ranked No. 35 on the ever-changing list.
Most in the news media do not share Mr. Farah and Mr. Corsi’s view. There was distaste evident in the voices of television anchors while they talked about the citizenship issue on Wednesday; the MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer, reading feedback from viewers, said many were “angry at the media for even covering the Trump birther nonsense.”
At the White House, the NBC correspondent Chuck Todd wondered aloud if Google and its ilk — which enable instant access to all manner of information — cannot be “starved,” then how should the media handle “crazy lies?”
Mr. Todd said on NBC that “the ability to get a conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it’s so much easier today than it was even 20 years ago, 10, 5 years.”
Most segments of the media kept the so-called “birther” movement at arm’s length when it emerged in the early months of the Obama presidency. By then, legal proof of Mr. Obama’s birth had already been released and groups like FactCheck.org had verified its authenticity.
But murmurs on Internet forums led to whispers on talk radio. Some hosts shrugged it off, but others, like Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs, questioned why the long-form birth certificate had not been released.
Only after Mr. Trump spoke out did it become a major topic for the news media. Fox News Channel commentators, who had rarely invoked the issue, started bringing it up, as did their guests; Sean Hannity, Fox’s 9 p.m. host, asked repeatedly in March, “Why can’t they just release the birth certificate?”
Indexing of last week’s news coverage by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that of the three main cable news channels, MSNBC hosts spent substantially more time talking about the citizenship issue than those on CNN or Fox News. What were they saying? That the theory was ludicrous.