The Associated Press has corrected a report issued yesterday which described Sen. Obama as having been "in the Muslim faith" as a child and repeated a false (and thoroughly debunked) claim by Insight Magazine and Fox News that Sen. Obama's public elementary in Jakarta, Indonesia was a "Muslim school."
The AP is to be commended for removing fabricated right-wing talking points from its reporting. Take a moment to thank them for setting the record straight on Senator Obama's childhood and faith.
www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html
Associated Press Headquarters 450 W. 33rd St. New York, NY 10001 Main Number +1-212-621-1500
When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.
Just when you thought the false Insight Magazine/Fox News "madrassa" smear had been thoroughly debunked by true outlets of journalism, the Associated Press repeats it wholesale as fact with no fact-checking whatsoever:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in the Muslim faith.Obama's religious background has come under scrutiny because he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from 1967 to 1971 and subsequently returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in the Muslim faith.
Obama's religious background has come under scrutiny because he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from 1967 to 1971 and subsequently returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.
An article which was supposed to cover Barack's recent comments on his Christian faith instead becomes a tool keep the "madrassa" smear alive in the press. High-traffic right-wing weblog Little Green Footballs has seized on this new report, touting it as "AP Admits Obama is an Islamic Apostate."
Allow me, if only briefly, to toot my own horn. In 2004, during the middle of Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, advertisements began trickling in from a small group of former Nixon operatives and disgruntled Vietnam veterans who'd started a Political Action Committee opposed to Sen. Kerry's candidacy. This group would later become known across the nation as the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
When I first saw this group's commercials, I spent the better part of that afternoon attempting to contact Sen. Kerry's campaign. After two hours, I finally caught the eye of a JohnKerry.com spokesperson via their online town hall meeting, and composed an emphatic message warning this individual of the Swift Boat Veteran ads' potential effectiveness.
I was told, and I quote, to "stop worrying about it," that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were "no big deal," that such an obvious smear by partisan hacks could never have an impact on Sen. Kerry's campaign. With all due respect to Sen. Kerry, who was both a hero and a patriot, his campaign staff was gravely mistaken in blowing off early warnings (such as mine) concerning the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Senator Obama must aggressively pursue and correct any media outlet which perpetuates this false "Islam/madrassa" smear. Contact the Associated Press and demand they correct this already-circulating article. Aggressively confront smear campaigns, and never stand by idly while media outlets actively distort who you are, where you're from, or what you stand for.
Senator Obama mustn't repeat John Kerry's mistakes of three years ago.
Update:
In the meantime, readers can contact the Associated Press to voice our concerns over their reporting in this story.
Borrowing Media Matters' guidelines for contacting press outlets: When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.
Remember this inane punditry from Howard Fineman?
Obama’s clicking — but not on the WebClinton, Edwards both opening up an Internet gapLook at Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign website. Not much going on there: no blogs, no video, no trail reports, no media-rich mechanics for involving people. What gives? Robert Gibbs, his communications director, tells me that all of that will change on February 10 – the day on which Obama is expected to formally declare his candidacy with a speech in Springfield, Illinois. (Will he take the Abe Lincoln thing all the way: a long black coat, a stovepipe hat and a speech of no more than 250 words?)Maybe Obama is such a rock star that he doesn’t need the mechanics this early in the game. The guy has a natural appeal that Sen. Hillary Clinton can’t match – though she is trying – and that makes even the sunny and engaging John Edwards (the golden boy of the last campaign) look boring. But it isn’t early, and Obama had better get a move on.When Hillary announced the other week, her campaign went live with a website they’d been working on for quite some time. It had been kept under wraps, with key players having secure access to tweak it into a state-of-the-art enterprise - which it is. Edwards’ site, with its video-based approach, is also first rate.But the web situation is an example of where things stand right now in the early stages of the Democratic race. Obama got in the first major salvo – which Hillary has answered with the entire Panzer Division. You can hear the tank treads clanking as she tries to take the high ground. And she may be gaining some.I know it sounds crazy – it’s a year from the first vote – but Obama better get that website up and running, fast.
It made me laugh, at least.
I'm just now getting a feel for everything, but what they've created here at my.barackobama.com appears to be the single greatest embracing of online social networking I've seen on any political candidate's behalf, ever. They've taken every useful feature from MySpace, Meetup.com, and phpBB systems to create a single attractive, intuitive community.
Barack's team should continue running headfirst into the social networking sphere. Advance it as much as possible. It's entirely to the benefit of our cause.
