Fox News Watchdog

Stating that “context matters,” Glenn Beck suggested he takes care to present information on air only if he has the “full context.” However, Beck has repeatedly and grossly distorted the context of people’s remarks.

Beck suggests he is careful to avoid
taking things out of context

Beck: “Context
matters.” From the July 20 edition of Fox
News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Here’s my take on Shirley
Sherrod: I don’t think Shirley should have been fired — or, I’m sorry, forced to resign. Based on the
facts that we have
right now, this is something that I wouldn’t air and demand a resignation on.
No, I wouldn’t. Why?
You know when we did Van Jones and we had all those clips of Van Jones, do you
know how many audio pieces we have
that we could’ve run, but we couldn’t get the full context of the
speech? Context matters.

In fact, Beck regularly takes
people’s words out of context

Beck frequently
distorts the original meaning or intent of people’s statements by failing to
provide relevant context. Here is a non-exhaustive list of
examples:

Beck cropped
Berwick quote to claim it “confirms everything that we said about him.”
On the July 8 edition of his Fox News
show, Beck claimed that a quote
from Donald Berwick, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator,
“confirms” what Beck and Fox News had previously said about how health care
reform will lead to the rationing of health care. Beck stated: “Here’s Berwick
on rationing, quote: ‘The decision is not whether or not we will ration care.
The decision will be whether we will ration with our eyes open.’ ” Beck edited
out the part of Berwick’s comment in which he explained that the current health
care system already rations care and that the question for the future is how
best to do it. Beck also failed to note that the insurance industry admits it
currently uses cost-benefit analyses to determine health care coverage.

Beck distorted
Obama’s comments from 1995 to accuse him of “racism” and
“profiling.” On the June 14 edition of his radio
program, Beck aired an edited audio clip of Obama
saying, “I really want to emphasize the word ‘responsibility.’ I think that
whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to
pay taxes to inner-city children –” Beck then likened the comments to “code
language” and said they sounded “like racism.” Beck omitted Obama’s full
comments, in which he said: “I think that whether you are a
white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to
inner-city children to — for them to go to school or
you are a inner-city child who doesn’t want to take responsibility for keeping
your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some
responsibility if we’re going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face
right now.” On his Fox News show, Beck again cropped Obama’s
comments to claim they sounded “an awful lot like profiling.”

Beck cropped
Green for All CEO’s speech to claim she admitted to a “plan to take over the
country.” On the June 10 edition of his Fox News
program, Beck played a portion of a speech by Green for All CEO Phaedra
Ellis-Lamkins in which she stated: “When Glenn Beck started talking about me,
someone said, ‘Are you angry?’ And what I said to him is, ‘Absolutely, we have a
plot to take over this country. Absolutely we do.’ It’s not a hidden agenda.”
Beck then said: “See what’s happening? They do have a plot, a plan to take over
the country. And the mask is coming off.” In fact, Ellis-Lamkins explained that the “agenda” of Green for All is that “all
people deserve equality” — not, as Beck suggested, a sinister plot to take over
the country.

Beck
misrepresented Apollo Alliance co-founder to suggest he wants to bring “the
economy to a complete halt.” On the May 5 edition of his Fox News
program, Beck distorted remarks by Apollo Alliance co-founder Joel Rogers to
suggest that Rogers’ “definition of the green economy” is to bring “the economy
to a complete halt” by eliminating “every power plant” and stopping “every car
in America.” In fact, Rogers was
underscoring the challenge of dealing with climate change, not advocating for a
shutdown of power generation and transportation sectors.
Nowhere in the remarks that Beck played did Rogers
advocate “bringing the economy to a halt,” and the Apollo Alliance’s plan for a
“clean energy economy” includes improving the efficiency of cars and power
plants — not stopping them.

Beck distorted
Wallis’ remarks on “redistribution of wealth” to attack him as a
“Marxist.” On the April 6 edition of his Fox News
show, Beck distorted comments Rev. Jim Wallis made to claim he is a “Marxist,”
playing audio of Wallis agreeing that “redistribution of wealth in society” is
“what the Gospel is about.” In fact, in the interview Beck selectively clipped,
Wallis actually discussed individuals who “transformed” their lives to focus on
charity, highlighting how Bill and Melinda Gates have been “doing a
redistribution of wealth” through their philanthropy.

Beck falsely
claimed Obama told tea partiers to “get out of the way.” During the
March 26 edition of
his Fox News show, Beck claimed that Obama was speaking about tea partiers when
he “went out on the road and he said you gotta get out of the way, because I
just need to mop up the mess.” However, in the speech Beck cited, Obama was discussing “folks
on the other side of the aisle” who created the financial “mess,” not tea party
protesters.

Beck played
doctored Reid audio to distort his jobs comments. On the March 5 edition of his radio
program, Beck played doctored audio of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying
it is “good” news that the economy lost only 36,000 jobs in February — an
assessment many economists agreed with. Beck criticized Reid’s statement, but
Beck’s audio cut out Reid’s accurate explanation that the “good” news was that
unemployment and job losses were lower than economists had
expected.

Beck took stolen
CRU email out of context to suggest climate change is a
“scam.” On the November 23, 2009, broadcast of Glenn Beck, Beck quoted an email stolen
from climate scientist Phil Jones in which Jones referred to a “trick of adding
in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years to hide the decline.”
Beck then commented, “Yes, he is talking about a trick that another scientist
previously used in a peer-reviewed journal to apparently hide the decline in
temperatures. Incredible.” However, other scientists have explained that “trick”
is a term used by scientists to refer to “a good way to deal with a problem” and
is not problematic, and that Jones’ phrase was “pulled out of context.”

Beck omitted
context of Bill Clinton comment to claim Clinton suggested “slow[ing] down our
economy” to fight global warming. On the May 21, 2008, edition of
his radio show, Beck played a cropped comment from a speech by former President
Clinton so that the only audio aired was: “We just have to slow down our economy
and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions, ’cause we’ve got to save the planet
for our grandchildren.” After playing the edited clip, Beck said, “There it
is. ‘We’ve got to slow
down our economy to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ If that doesn’t tell
you everything you need to know, nothing will.” In fact, Clinton did not say
“[w]e’ve got to slow down our economy”; rather, he said that “rich” countries could
take that approach, but it would not work, and that the “only way” to fight
global warming is to prove that doing so “is good economics that we will create
more jobs to build a sustainable economy.” The next day, Beck apologized and
acknowledged that Clinton’s remarks were “taken out of
context.”

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Despite mainstream religious support for environmental safeguards, Glenn Beck mocked the group Faithful America for its advocacy for climate change as a religious issue and denounced the idea as “fascism” and “evil.” 

Beck, crew denounce religious concern over climate change, attack group’s ads critical of Beck 

Beck: religious environmentalism is “fascism” and “evil.” On the July 16 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program, Beck warned listeners that any religious authority suggesting government-enacted environmental controls is actually advocating fascism, saying, “If your pastor or priest or whoever is talking about social justice and it is, ‘God is telling you that the government needs to solve global warming,’ run for your life. Because it is — it’s fascism that they’re really behind. It is a really bad, progressive, turn-of-the-century stuff. It’s evil.” 

Beck and co-host Burguiere: Environment, health care, immigration, war and torture not religious issues. Later in the show, Beck producer Stu Burguiere derided Faithful America – a group running an ad campaign critical of Beck’s repeated attacks on social justice — by sarcastically saying, “Yeah, this religious group is really taking to task a lot of religious issues. For example, I’m going through their blogs here, this is pretty interesting. The first one is ‘Stop the devastating effects of climate change.’ That’s their first religious issue.” Beck added, “Well, that’s a good religious issue.” Burguiere went on to list Faithful America’s focus issues health care reform, immigration reform, and ending war and torture, suggesting that they, too, were not legitimate religious issues.

Numerous religious groups describe climate change as a religious issue

Pope criticized the failure of world leaders to agree to a climate change treaty. The Associated Press reported in January that Pope Benedict XVI admonished world leaders for failing to produce a new climate change treaty at a summit in Copenhagen. The article also noted that the pope has stressed the importance of protecting the environment in encyclicals and speeches, and that the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells and joined in reforestation projects. The pope was quoted as saying, “The protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, inasmuch as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God.” 

Christian Coalition supported climate change legislation for economic, environment, and religious reasons. The conservative Christian Coalition purchased ads thanking Sen. Lindsey Graham for his bipartisan support for climate change legislation. The group supports climate change legislation for security, economic, and religious reasons. The Christian Coalition website explained, ”As conservatives, we stand up for our country’s national security and the health of our economy. And, as Christians, we recognize the Biblical mandate to care for God’s creation and protect our children’s future.” 

86 evangelical leaders signed onto the Evangelical Climate Initiative. In 2006, 86 evangelical leaders, including presidents of evangelical colleges and prominent pastor Rick Warren, signed an initiative calling for federal legislation to curb the production of greenhouse gases. Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter said, “As Christians, our faith in Jesus Christ compels us to love our neighbors and to be stewards of God’s creation. The good news is that with God’s help, we can stop global warming, for our kids, our world and for the Lord.” Rich Cizik, former vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals and a signatory to the initiative, said, ”The issue shook my theology to its core. … It changed me as much as my being born again 30 years before. This threatens the whole planet, so it raises a basic issue of who we are as people. Climate change isn’t just a scientific question. It’s a moral, a religious, a cosmological question. It involves everything we are and what we have a right to do.”

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As more and more media outlets follow Fox News’ lead in covering the manufactured New Black Panther Party/Department of Justice (DOJ) scandal, Media Matters offers three case studies of previous bogus right-wing attacks that, with help from Fox News, went mainstream before being debunked.

The New Black Panthers and the
pattern

Fox News
aggressively promoting spurious allegations against DOJ. Taking a
cue from right-wing blogs and The
Washington Times, Fox News has
spent the past week aggressively promoting allegations
that the Obama Justice Department dropped voter intimidation charges against the
New Black Panther Party due to racial considerations.

The charges are being leveled by J. Christian Adams, a
GOP activist and former DOJ attorney who was hired to the Bush DOJ by Bradley
Schlozman, a political appointee who was ultimately found to have improperly
politicized DOJ hiring. Adams admits to lacking firsthand knowledge of some of
the events, conversations, and decisions that he cites to advance his
accusations. Also, Adams’ allegations are undermined by the fact that the
decision to not pursue criminal charges against the New Black Panthers was made
by the Bush-era DOJ (for which Adams worked); further, the Obama DOJ obtained
judgment against one of the defendants.

Despite holes in
story, other media outlets follow Fox News’ lead. In a July 1 article, the Associated Press also advanced Adams’
story, with a report
largely based on claims Adam made on “Fox News earlier.” Adams is identified as
“a former Justice Department lawyer” who “is accusing his ex-superiors of
ignoring white voters’ rights and creating a systematic ‘one-way’ approach in
which only minorities are protected.” On July 7, CNN hosted Adams to rehash his
unsubstantiated accusations, referring to the discredited GOP activist as a
“whistleblower.” On July 8, CNN
covered the story on multiple programs, with segments on the allegations on
CNN
Newsroom and Campbell
Brown

New Black Panther
story following a familiar pattern. Fox News’ embrace
of Adams’ accusations against the Department of Justice are in keeping with a pattern observed in
previous instances in which a bogus story has jumped from the conservative
fringe to the mainstream media:

1. Right-wing
bloggers, talk radio
hosts, and other conservative media
outlets start promoting and distorting the story.

2. Fox News picks up
the story and gives it heavy, one-sided coverage.

3. Fox News and
conservative media attack the “liberal media” for ignoring the distorted
story.

4. Mainstream media
outlets eventually cover the story, echoing the right-wing
distortions.

5. Fox News receives
credit for promoting the story.

6. The story is later
proven to be false or wildly misleading, long after damage is done.

This same pattern has played out
several times before, with some variations. Three prominent examples from the past two
years are the ACORN videos, Barack Obama’s “relationship” with William Ayers,
and the “Climategate scandal.”

The ACORN videos

With the assistance of Andrew
Breitbart and Fox News’ Glenn Beck, conservative activist and filmmaker James
O’Keefe caused an uproar by posting videos depicting himself and Hannah Giles
soliciting advice from employees of the Association of Community Organizers for
Reform Now (ACORN) on how to set up an underage prostitution ring. The story was
picked up first by Fox News and then the mainstream press, and eventually led to
Congress voting
to strip ACORN of federal funding and the organization ceasing
operations. Later inquiries determined that the videos, which had been
heavily edited, did not show any criminal behavior.

Breitbart’s
BigGovernment.com posts ACORN videos. On the morning of
September 10, 2009, O’Keefe posted
the first series of
videos to
Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. According to O’Keefe: “Hannah Giles and I took
advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous
criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply — which they did without
hesitation.”

Fox News devotes
massive amounts of coverage to ACORN videos. Beginning on
September 10, 2009, Fox News — led by Glenn Beck — devoted significant
resources to covering the ACORN videos story. On September 10 alone, Fox News
aired no fewer than 17 separate segments on
six different programs regarding the videos. This level of coverage had been
foreshadowed by Beck, who hinted at the videos’ existence on September 9,
telling his audience, “Trust me. Everybody now says they’re going to be talking
about health care. I don’t think so. Tomorrow you will see an exclusive — stuff
on tomorrow’s program.”

Beck kicks off
conservative complaints about lack of media
coverage. On September 11, 2009, Beck
complained on his Fox News show that the “mainstream media” were ignoring this
“huge” story:

BECK: This story was so huge, so
huge, I wondered last night, how many in the media are going to cover it? Well,
we watched. Let’s take a look here. Let’s just take this story by the numbers.
Since yesterday morning until about noon today, how many times did the
mainstream media outlets cover the ACORN story? What a surprise? Coming in at
number one, FOX, 19 times, at least 19 times. CNN, how many times? Whoa! Three,
three, wow. … How about MSNBC, how much did they cover the ACORN scandal? Zero.
ABC, how many times did ABC cover it? Zero. What do you say, CBS? Oh, zero. NBC,
how many times did they cover this story? New York Times, this is a good one, huh?
You could get a Pulitzer Prize. One.

Conservative media critics singled
out ABC
News and then-World News
anchor Charles
Gibson for not reporting on the ACORN videos.

Mainstream media
outlets begin reporting on ACORN videos. The New York Times published a story
on the ACORN videos on September 15, 2009, reporting: “Conservative advocates
and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing Acorn
workers, who appeared to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion. It
was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no
secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and
appointees they view as leftist.”

The CBS Evening
News first
reported on the ACORN videos on September 15. NBC’s Nightly
News and ABC’s World News first
reported on the ACORN videos on September 16.

Media reporters,
pundits credit Fox News for ACORN coverage. On the September
20, 2009, edition of CNN’s Reliable
Sources, host and Washington
Post media critic Howard Kurtz suggested that Fox News “stampeded”
the rest of the media in covering “the ACORN uproar”:

KURTZ: All right. Let me get a break
here. And when we come back, the ACORN uproar. Fox News jumps all over those
undercover videos showing ACORN employees trying to help a phony pimp and his
phony prostitute. Were the rest of the media late to this burgeoning
scandal?

[...]

KURTZ: Let me turn now to the
broader question on the role of Fox News. Let’s put up the cover of Time
magazine. The cover boy this week is Glenn Beck; the headline “Mad Man.” And he
did not talk to the magazine for this. And we talked, last week on this program,
Chris Cillizza about the Van Jones story, also pushed by a Fox White House
adviser who resigned for saying and doing controversial some things; now the
ACORN story. Do you have the feeling that mainstream or establishment news
organizations are being stampeded by Fox?

On September 20, 2009, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander
wrote:

It’s tempting to dismiss such
gimmicks. Fox News, joined by right-leaning talk radio and bloggers, often hypes
stories to apocalyptic proportions while casting competitors as too liberal or
too lazy to report the truth.

But they’re also occasionally
pumping legitimate stories. I thought that was the case with ACORN and, before
it, the Fox-fueled controversy that led to the resignation of White House
environmental adviser Van Jones.

On September 26, 2009, then-New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt
remonstrated the paper for its response to the ACORN videos, writing that
the Times “stood still” on the
story and quoted managing editor Jill Abramson saying that the paper has
“insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk
radio.”

The ACORN story
falls apart. Subsequent investigations into the
ACORN videotapes revealed that they had been heavily edited to remove
exculpatory material, and that O’Keefe and Breitbart had falsely claimed that
ACORN employees in “almost every single office” had assisted them in setting up
child prostitution rings. In fact,
several of the ACORN employees involved in the videos either refused to help
O’Keefe and Giles or contacted the
police following their meeting with the duo.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles
Hynes investigated
the videotapes and “cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing” after determining that
O’Keefe and Giles had “edited the tape to meet their agenda.”

An independent review
conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (D), who
was hired by ACORN to conduct an inquiry in part into the videos, found that
“some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was
clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of
intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that
action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the
videographers.”

In April, California Attorney
General Edmund G. Brown Jr. released a
report on the “severely
edited”
ACORN videotapes which found that “some members of the community
organizing group ACORN engaged in ‘highly inappropriate behavior,’ but committed
no violation of criminal laws.”

William Ayers

During the 2008 presidential
campaign, reports surfaced that then-candidate Barack Obama knew and had had
limited interactions with fellow Chicagoan William
Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground group, which in the 1970s
had bombed several government buildings. Right-wing bloggers and Fox News’ Sean
Hannity seized on the story, embellishing Obama’s contacts with Ayers in order
to paint him as a “radical.” Obama’s “relationship” with Ayers eventually
reached a national audience during one of the Democratic debates. It wasn’t
until months later that the media documented Obama’s largely tangential links to
Ayers, debunking the right-wing myth.

Right-wing
bloggers attack Obama-Ayers links. Conservative
bloggers seized on two media reports to attack Obama’s links to Ayers. On
February 15, 2008, Bloomberg News reported
that “Obama could face questions about his relationship with William Ayers,”
noting that Ayers “donated $200 in 2001 to Obama’s Illinois state Senate
campaign and served with him from 1999 to 2002 on the nine-member board of the
Woods Fund.” On February 22, 2008, Politico‘s Ben Smith reported that in
“1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama,
to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known
figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine
Dohrn.”

Based on these articles, right-wing
bloggers began attacking
and distorting
Ayers’ links to Obama:

• Commentary‘s John
  Podhoretz: “But here’s a thought experiment. What if John McCain had visited the
  Unabomber’s cabin? Or had been photographed with Terry Nichols? Or had stopped
  off at David Duke’s house at some point because he was gathering support and
  donors?” ["Obama's Ayers," 2/22/08]

• Stop the ACLU:
  “Obama does some nice double talk and condemns the actions of the Weather
  Underground, however he remains good friends with two of them that remain
  unrepentant for their actions.” ["Obama's Terrorist Friends," 2/23/08]

• Right Wing Nut
  House: “I am talking about the extent of the candidate’s ties to domestic
  terrorists from the 1960′s and how the American people might feel about their
  future president paling [sic] around with someone who set off bombs as a member
  of the group Weather Underground and to this day refuses to apologize for it.”
  ["Obama and the Radicals: Soulmates?" 2/23/08]

• Human
  Events‘ John Batchelor: “Will the four
  horsemen of Mr. Obama’s November, Rezko, Ayers, Rashidi and Auchi, lead to a
  similar defeat for the spectacular candidacy of Barack Obama?” ["The Obama
  Files," 2/25/08]

Hannity picks up
Ayers story. Hannity seized on the Ayers story
soon after, and mentioned Obama’s links to Ayers on an almost daily basis for
weeks afterward.

From the February 27, 2008, edition
of Fox News’ Hannity &
Colmes:

HANNITY: Bob Beckel, I want to ask
you about William Ayers. If you recall, he admitted that he was involved in the
bombings of New York City police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol building in
1971, the Pentagon in 1972. We have a report out today, ABC News via the New
York Sun that he donated to the Obama campaign. We have a report out, that Obama
visited his home as, quote, “a rite of passage when launching his political
career in the mid-1990s.” His spokesman — Barack Obama — said, “Yes, they’re
friendly. They know each other.” Does the presidential candidate for the
Democratic Party have any business being friendly with and potentially accepting
donations from a man that admits that he blew up and helped plan and set a bomb
at our Pentagon?

From the February 28, 2008, edition
of Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: There is the issue of this
guy from the Weather Underground, this guy Bill Ayers. This is a guy that admits
to being part of the bombing with the Weather Underground of the New York City
police headquarters in 1970, our Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972.
And it was reported by Jonah Goldberg, who will be here tomorrow night, that as
a right of passage, Barack Obama visited him when launching his political career
in the 1990s.

When asked about it this week of
whether or not they had a friendship, Barack Obama’s spokesperson admitted that,
in fact, they were — that they did have a friendly relationship. This is a guy
who is admitting to bombing our Pentagon, and was part of a group that declared
war on the United States. I’m sitting here thinking as an outsider, if I’m
Hillary Clinton, that’s a big issue for the American people in a post-9/11
world.

From the March 9, 2008, edition of
Hannity’s America:

HANNITY: William Ayers is a guy that
was with the Weather Underground, a group that admitted to bombing our Pentagon,
bombing our Capitol Building, bombing New York City police headquarters, said as
recently as 2001 he regrets he didn’t go further. A group that declared war
against the United States.

Barack Obama met with him when he
started his political career in the 1990s and he also went on to say about
William Ayers that he is friendly with him. You look into that camera and you
tell me why a presidential candidate should get away with being friends with an
admitted terrorist.

Hannity complains
about lack of media coverage. Soon after he began flogging the
story, Hannity began attacking the media for ignoring it.

From the April 9, 2008, edition of
Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Well, the philosophy —
because they declared war against the United States. And the philosophy was —
the Weathermen philosophy was kill all the rich people. Ayers summed — these
are Ayers’ words: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments.
Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents. That’s where it’s really at.” And
he’s unrepentant.

KARL ROVE: Right, well, and they
attacked — they attacked, as I recall, police facilities, military facilities,
U.S. government buildings. And they did so in a manner without apparent regard
for human life.

HANNITY: Yes.

ROVE: I mean, I think — I don’t
recall that people were killed or injured, but that was not the — that wasn’t
the intention. They wanted to create violence and blow things
up.

HANNITY: Karl, I first interviewed Jeremiah Wright in March of
2007. And I stayed on the issue. And it took almost a year for the mainstream
media to
pick up on the story, and it became a big story. Do you believe at some point
somebody in the mainstream media is going to examine this relationship that
Barack Obama’s campaign claims is
friendly?

From the April 15, 2008, edition of
Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: But Doug Schoen, this is
the problem. A new narrative has emerged. And it is Michelle Obama’s comments.
It’s these comments in San Francisco. It’s the unrepentant terrorist, Bill
Ayers. We’ve been covering on this program. The mainstream media has ignored it.
It’s him attending the Million Man March. Why did he attend the Million Man
March?

Stephanopoulos
talks to Hannity, asks Obama about Ayers. On the April 15,
2008, edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Hannity interviewed ABC News’
George Stephanopoulos, who was set to co-moderate the Democratic presidential
debate the following day. During that interview, Hannity suggested to
Stephanopoulos that he ask Obama about his “association with Bill Ayers, the
unrepentant terrorist from the Weather Underground.” Hannity continued:

HANNITY: When asked about it by
the Politico, [Obama campaign chief
strategist] David Axelrod said they have a friendly relationship and that they
had done a number of speeches together and that they sat on a board together. Is
that a question you might ask?

Stephanopoulos responded to Hannity:
“Well, I’m taking notes right now.”

That same day, Stephanopoulos had
appeared on The Steve Malzberg
Show, a conservative radio program broadcast out of New York City.
Malzberg also suggested that Stephanopoulos ask Obama about Ayers: “How could a
man running for the presidency of the United States possibly have anything to
do, or have anything but disdain, for a man who did what he has done to this
country?” Stephanopoulos responded: “That’s a damn good
question.”

During the April 16 debate,
Stephanopoulos asked Obama:

STEPHANOPOULOS: [F]irst a follow-up
on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A
gentleman named William Ayers — he was part of the Weather Underground in the
1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never
apologized for that, and, in fact, on 9-11, he was quoted in The New York Times
saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do
enough.”

An early organizing meeting for your
state Senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are
friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to
Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

Stephanopoulos later
denied that Hannity had influenced his questioning: “We have been
researching this for a while. … Part of what we discovered is that Sen. Obama had
never been asked directly about it, even though it’s being written about and
talked about and Republicans are signaling that this is gonna be an issue in the
general election.”

Hannity, on the April 16, 2008,
edition of Hannity & Colmes,
credited Stephanopoulos for his “tough questions” to Obama: “Finally, the media
asked him about Bill Ayers, which we have been pointing out.”

Boston
Globe: Ayers story
shows how blog chatter becomes news. In an April 18,
2008, Boston Globe article,
Joanna Weiss wrote:

The sudden national focus on the
connection between the Democratic presidential hopeful and a Vietnam-era radical
named William Ayers —
a onetime fugitive from justice who told The New York Times, “I don’t regret
setting bombs” — set
the political world abuzz. The news that Obama held a campaign event at Ayers’s
home in 1995, and served with Ayers on a Chicago community board, was either
damning or innocuous, a worthy disclosure or a sure sign of the decline of
political journalism.

But the Obama-Ayers story itself is
a case study in the ways that news jumps between blogs and traditional media,
the lingering power of network news, and the persistence of Internet conspiracy
theories. In fact, it was hard yesterday to tell which got more scrutiny: the
link between Obama and Ayers, or the link between ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
and Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Months later,
New York Times throws cold water
on Obama-Ayers story. On October 3, 2008, months after
the debate made the Ayers story national news, The New York Times published an in-depth
look into the links between Obama and Ayers. The Times reported that “the two men do not
appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the
radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers”:

At a tumultuous meeting of
anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped
found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target
the Pentagon and United States Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a
lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met
Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically
since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office,
on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde
Park neighbors.

[...]

More recently, conservative critics
who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has
misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has
dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on
education issues in Chicago that I know.”

A review of records of the schools
project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr.
Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do
not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the
radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged
in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

After then-vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin alleged that Obama “palled around” with “terrorist” Ayers,
the Associated Press reported
on October 5, 2008, that Palin’s “reference to Obama’s
relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather
Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows
they were ‘pals’ or even close when they worked on community boards years ago
and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his
career.”

“Climategate”

Climate scientists at the University
of East Anglia in Britain revealed
in November 2009 that hackers had illegally accessed a university server and
stolen thousands of private emails, which were then released publicly. Conservatives
immediately seized on the messages, taking them out of
context to accuse the scientists of lying about global warming and claiming
that the emails undermine the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic
climate change. Long after the “Climategate” smear wound its way through the
media, two independent investigations cleared the scientists of wrongdoing.

Conservatives
promote “Climategate” smears. Not long after the hacked emails
were released, conservative bloggers and media figures began attacking the
climate scientists and the science of global
warming:

• Rush Limbaugh: “By
  the way, folks, I want to give you a website to go to when you get a chance.
  It’s called ClimateDepot.com. Something fascinating has
  happened, and I was first alerted to this today by our official climatologist,
  Dr. Roy Spencer. A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU. That is
  Britain’s largest climate research institute. They are a huge proponent of
  global warming. … I don’t know if the jury’s still out on that, but more and
  more people are picking up on this. The whole thing as we’ve — I’ve
  instinctively known this from the get-go 20 years ago. The whole thing’s made
  up.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/20/09]

• Atlas Shrugs’ Pam
  Geller: “How hard will the corrupt activist media work to bury this explosive
  story? Many of us have exposed the hoax of climate change as revealed by
  legitimate, responsible scientists for years, but still the elites rob us blind
  and torment us with legislation, regulation on ‘the greatest threat facing humanity’ (akbar!).” ["Global Climate
  Change Hoax: The Greatest Fraud in Human History," 11/20/09]

Fox News becomes
“Climategate” central. The “Climategate” smears quickly
jumped to Fox News, which assumed the leading
role in promoting the story. Several Fox News personalities attempted to obscure the fact that
the emails were stolen from the University of East Anglia, instead referring to
the messages as “leaked,” “revealed,” or “uncovered.” Fox News reporters and
commentators alike promoted falsehoods and distortions:

• Glenn Beck: “This
  is what appears to be going on behind the scenes and literally trillions of
  dollars of policy decisions are being based on what these guys are telling us.
  If your gut said, ‘Wait a minute, this global warming thing, it sounds like a
  scam,’ well, I think you’re seeing it now. We told you this was going on,
  without proof, because we listened to our gut. You’d never believe me, but once
  again, here we are with yet another brand new reality.” [Glenn Beck, 11/23/09]

• Sean Hannity: “Now
  we find out that this institute, in fact, was hiding from the people of Great
  Britain and the world the fact that climate change is a hoax, something I’ve
  been saying for a long time. Why would they try to hide it if there wasn’t
  another agenda?” [Hannity, 11/24/09]

• Fox News
  correspondent James Rosen: “[Rep. Darrell] Issa and others also referenced ‘Climate-gate,’ the scandal that has rocked the scientific world with
  revleations that some leading proponents of global warming have manipulated
  findings, sought to suppress contradictory evidence, and destroyed more than 150
  years worth of raw climate data.” [Special
  Report, 12/8/09]

Media
conservatives pressure broadcast networks to cover
“Climategate.” As Fox News’ coverage grew more
intense, conservative groups began complaining that other media outlets were not
covering “Climategate.” The Media Research Center mounted a campaign to pressure
the broadcast networks to cover “the great and growing Climategate scandal,”
issuing press
releases marking the days that had elapsed since the “scandal”
broke.

Networks
eventually cover “Climategate,” propagate misinformation. All three
of the broadcast networks eventually covered “Climategate,” and all three helped
to spread the right-wing smears upon which the story was
built:

• On the December 9,
  2009, edition of ABC’s World
  News, correspondent David Wright reported that the
  emails show scientists using a “trick to hide the decline in temperatures.” In
  fact, the “trick” mentioned in the emails referred to tree-ring data, not
  actual temperatures, and several scientists said that the word “trick” was being
  taken out of context and made to sound deceptive and
  incriminating.

• On the December 4,
  2009, edition of NBC’s Nightly
  News, anchor Brian Williams asked: “Have the books
  been cooked on climate change?” Reporter Anne Thompson said the emails “show
  climate scientists massaging the data” but offered no evidence to support that
  claim.

• On the December 5
  broadcast of the CBS Evening News,
  anchor Jeff Glor asked: “[D]id some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate
  change look worse than it is?” CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier claimed that the emails
  “have cast doubts on the very science” of climate change and asserted that the
  emails “seem to show that some of the world’s top experts decided to exclude or
  manipulate some research that didn’t help prove global warming exists.” Dozier
  ignored evidence contradicting this assertion.

Independent
investigations clear scientists involved. On July 1,
The Washington Post reported
on a June report released by a committee of scientists, assembled by Penn State
in the wake of the email theft, to investigate whether one of the scientists
involved in “Climategate,” Michael Mann, had engaged in “research misconduct.”
According to the Post:

The Investigatory Committee, after
careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance
to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of
Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.

More specifically, the Investigatory
Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he
participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from
accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or
reporting research, or other scolarly activities.

The decision of the Investigatory
Committee was unanimous.

On July 7, the Associated Press reported
that an “independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from
one of the world’s leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the
scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global
uproar dubbed ‘Climategate.’ ” According to the AP:

The inquiry by former U.K. civil
servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia’s
Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption
in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year.
But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with
critics.

“We find that their rigor and
honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” Russell said. “But we do find that
there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of
openness.”

Russell’s inquiry into the scandal
is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the
e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November,
right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.

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Rush Limbaugh attacked the Center for Science in the Public Interest as a “wacko bunch of leftist kooks” who “want to ban Chinese food.” In fact, CSPI, which advocates for nutrition, health, and food safety, has lauded Chinese restaurants and labeled most Chinese dishes “healthy.”

Limbaugh: CSPI “want[s] to ban
Chinese food”

Limbaugh attacks
CSPI as a “miserable,” “unhappy” group that will have you eating
“cardboard” and “miniature rocks.” On his July 9
radio show, Limbaugh discussed CSPI and its
intent to file suit against
McDonald’s for its “unfair and deceptive” promotion of toys to children through
its Happy Meals. Limbaugh stated
of the Washington-based group: “They wanted to ban Chinese food. These people want to get in your life and tell you what to eat,”
and attacked them as “kooks, statists, [and] nannies.”

From the July 9 broadcast of
Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh
Show:

LIMBAUGH: You know, the Center for
Science in the Public
Interest, this wacko bunch of leftist kooks, statists, nannies — these are the people who
banned coconut oil from your popcorn in movie theaters, have gotten rid of MSG,
the flavoring in Chinese food. They wanted to ban Chinese food. These people want to get in your life and tell you what to eat. If
you look at these people, you’d say,
well, they’re barely alive. They’re skeletal; they’re miserable; they are unhappy; and they want to spread that misery to
everybody else by having you eat basically nothing but tofu and cardboard, run
around and eat miniature rocks and berries as you traverse the deserts of the
world.

And their latest target was
McDonald’s Happy Meal. They wanted to sue McDonald’s to remove the toys from the
Happy Meal package because the toys were incentive to kids to go out — and their parents — to go out and buy Happy
Meals, which the Center for Science in the Public Interest determined was
unhealthy and unwise and in fact it’s none of their business.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You know, this group ought
not get any attention.
They’ve got a logo
and a fax machine. Because they’re a bunch of liberals, the media gives them instant
credibility. They’re just a bunch of kooks! They’re no different than your crazy
aunt in the basement who gives herself a logo and a fax machine and sends it out
to the media and says she’s against whatever. That’s essentially who they
are.

CSPI has labeled most Chinese food
“healthy”

CSPI report on
Chinese food: “Too much sodium in otherwise healthful
food.” In a March 2007 analysis, “Wok
Carefully,” on popular Chinese restaurant meals, CSPI stated that
“Chinese food is often rich in vegetables and the fat comes mostly from
heart-safe, trans-fat-free vegetable oils” and that “Chinese food hasn’t gotten
worse since CSPI first looked” in 1993. The study lauded Chinese restaurants for
“keeping a lid on saturated and trans fat, thanks to vegetable oil, no cheese,
and a host of seafood, poultry, and (hooray!) vegetable dishes.” However, the
study said, “Chinese
restaurant food is loaded with salt and … delivers a load of calories, thanks to
its oil, noodles, and deep-fried batter or breading.”

CSPI executive
director: “Many Chinese entrées are loaded with healthy” ingredients. In the summary announcing the Chinese food
analysis, CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson stated: “Many Chinese entrées
are loaded with healthy vegetables and lean shrimp or chicken. However, when it
comes to sodium, there’s no real safe harbor on the Chinese restaurant
menu.”

CSPI urged FDA to
ban grain imports from China in
wake of pet food recall. In April 2007, CSPI urged
the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) to ban imports of wheat gluten, rice protein, and other
grain products from China in light of a pet food recall at the time due to contamination with the industrial chemical seeks “to educate the public,
advocate government policies that are consistent with scientific evidence on
health and environmental issues, and counter industry’s powerful influence on
public opinion and public policies.” The website also states that “CSPI will
keep fighting for government policies and corporate practices that promote
healthy diets, prevent deceptive marketing practices, and ensure that science is
used to promote the public welfare.”

Touting
“real food,” Limbaugh has railed
against government, food safety advocates

Limbaugh
touts McDonald’s hamburgers and slams the “wackos.” On his July 9 radio
show, Limbaugh said: “I remember back in
the days of the global warming craze when the wackos were suggesting don’t eat
McDonald’s, don’t eat beef because it leads to cow methane, causing global
warming.” Limbaugh continued: “Remember, I sent one of the Snerdleys over to
McDonald’s in Times Square and picked up 240 Quarter Pounders with Cheese and
Big Macs and brought them back to the studio and had the whole transaction take
place on the phone on the air — just to stand up and support
McDonald’s.”

Limbaugh to children: Can’t find
food? “There’s always the neighborhood dumpster” or “a Happy Meal.”
On his June 16 show, referencing a
report that children “face a summer of hunger” because
“[w]hile classes were in session, they relied on free or discount cafeteria
meals … [b]ut they will not be reached by the patchwork summer food programs
financed by” the federal government, Limbaugh stated that
“a summer off from government eating might be just the ticket” to curbing
childhood obesity. He later characterized children “starving to death out there
because there’s no school meal being provided” as “one of the benefits of school
being out.” He also challenged Summer Food
Service programs by criticizing children for not knowing how to find food.
Limbaugh first suggested that children should “try your house,” and “if that
doesn’t work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.” He concluded, “There’s another
place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the
neighborhood dumpster.”

Limbaugh: “We can
now thank the regime for seizing our salt shakers.” On the
April 20 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh commented: “We can now
thank the regime for seizing our salt shakers.” Limbaugh added that “they’re
going to take away our salt shakers, and we’re supposed to thank the regime for
seasoning our food.”
.In fact, the FDA review Limbaugh was referring to had nothing to
do with consumers’ use of table salt and instead involved examining warnings
about high sodium content in processed foods and restaurant meals, the sources
of 77 percent of sodium intake.

Limbaugh:
President Obama is “hen-pecked” by his wife, who won’t let him eat “real
food.” On his June 24 radio show, Limbaugh
said that “half the reason”
President Obama “leaves” the house “is to go get a burger because his wife is making him eat
watercress and bamboo in there. He wants to get out and have some real food:
some fries, some onion rings, some burgers. … I mean, it’s real food. Who knows
what they’re feeding the poor guy in the White House.” Limbaugh concluded:
“Obviously he’s hen-pecked.”

Limbaugh: Food
safety advocates “going to go after Oreos.” On his July 27,
2009, radio show, Limbaugh attacked the Cancer Project
for its anti-hot dog billboard
advertisement, which followed research into processed meat that also spurred a lawsuit against food companies to add cancer-risk
warning labels on hot dog packaging. Limbaugh called the group “a bunch of wacko
health freaks, health Nazis” and claimed that “if you relish hot dogs, beware.”
Limbaugh went on to call the suit “absurd” and “hilarious” and warned that this
is “the starting point. … [A]fter that, they’re going to go for
Oreos.”

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As more and more media outlets follow Fox News’ lead in covering the manufactured New Black Panther Party/Department of Justice (DOJ) scandal, Media Matters offers three case studies of previous bogus right-wing attacks that, with help from Fox News, went mainstream before being debunked.

The New Black Panthers and the
pattern

Fox News
aggressively promoting spurious allegations against DOJ. Taking a
cue from right-wing blogs and The
Washington Times, Fox News has
spent the past week aggressively promoting allegations
that the Obama Justice Department dropped voter intimidation charges against the
New Black Panther Party due to racial considerations.

The charges are being leveled by J. Christian Adams, a
GOP activist and former DOJ attorney who was hired to the Bush DOJ by Bradley
Schlozman, a political appointee who was ultimately found to have improperly
politicized DOJ hiring. Adams admits to lacking firsthand knowledge of some of
the events, conversations, and decisions that he cites to advance his
accusations. Also, Adams’ allegations are undermined by the fact that the
decision to not pursue criminal charges against the New Black Panthers was made
by the Bush-era DOJ (for which Adams worked); further, the Obama DOJ obtained
judgment against one of the defendants.

Despite holes in
story, other media outlets follow Fox News’ lead. In a July 1 article, the Associated Press also advanced Adams’
story, with a report
largely based on claims Adam made on “Fox News earlier.” Adams is identified as
“a former Justice Department lawyer” who “is accusing his ex-superiors of
ignoring white voters’ rights and creating a systematic ‘one-way’ approach in
which only minorities are protected.” On July 7, CNN hosted Adams to rehash his
unsubstantiated accusations, referring to the discredited GOP activist as a
“whistleblower.” On July 8, CNN
covered the story on multiple programs, with segments on the allegations on
CNN
Newsroom and Campbell
Brown

New Black Panther
story following a familiar pattern. Fox News’ embrace
of Adams’ accusations against the Department of Justice are in keeping with a pattern observed in
previous instances in which a bogus story has jumped from the conservative
fringe to the mainstream media:

1. Right-wing
bloggers, talk radio
hosts, and other conservative media
outlets start promoting and distorting the story.

2. Fox News picks up
the story and gives it heavy, one-sided coverage.

3. Fox News and
conservative media attack the “liberal media” for ignoring the distorted
story.

4. Mainstream media
outlets eventually cover the story, echoing the right-wing
distortions.

5. Fox News receives
credit for promoting the story.

6. The story is later
proven to be false or wildly misleading, long after damage is done.

This same pattern has played out
several times before, with some variations. Three prominent examples from the past two
years are the ACORN videos, Barack Obama’s “relationship” with William Ayers,
and the “Climategate scandal.”

The ACORN videos

With the assistance of Andrew
Breitbart and Fox News’ Glenn Beck, conservative activist and filmmaker James
O’Keefe caused an uproar by posting videos depicting himself and Hannah Giles
soliciting advice from employees of the Association of Community Organizers for
Reform Now (ACORN) on how to set up an underage prostitution ring. The story was
picked up first by Fox News and then the mainstream press, and eventually led to
Congress voting
to strip ACORN of federal funding and the organization ceasing
operations. Later inquiries determined that the videos, which had been
heavily edited, did not show any criminal behavior.

Breitbart’s
BigGovernment.com posts ACORN videos. On the morning of
September 10, 2009, O’Keefe posted
the first series of
videos to
Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. According to O’Keefe: “Hannah Giles and I took
advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous
criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply — which they did without
hesitation.”

Fox News devotes
massive amounts of coverage to ACORN videos. Beginning on
September 10, 2009, Fox News — led by Glenn Beck — devoted significant
resources to covering the ACORN videos story. On September 10 alone, Fox News
aired no fewer than 17 separate segments on
six different programs regarding the videos. This level of coverage had been
foreshadowed by Beck, who hinted at the videos’ existence on September 9,
telling his audience, “Trust me. Everybody now says they’re going to be talking
about health care. I don’t think so. Tomorrow you will see an exclusive — stuff
on tomorrow’s program.”

Beck kicks off
conservative complaints about lack of media
coverage. On September 11, 2009, Beck
complained on his Fox News show that the “mainstream media” were ignoring this
“huge” story:

BECK: This story was so huge, so
huge, I wondered last night, how many in the media are going to cover it? Well,
we watched. Let’s take a look here. Let’s just take this story by the numbers.
Since yesterday morning until about noon today, how many times did the
mainstream media outlets cover the ACORN story? What a surprise? Coming in at
number one, FOX, 19 times, at least 19 times. CNN, how many times? Whoa! Three,
three, wow. … How about MSNBC, how much did they cover the ACORN scandal? Zero.
ABC, how many times did ABC cover it? Zero. What do you say, CBS? Oh, zero. NBC,
how many times did they cover this story? New York Times, this is a good one, huh?
You could get a Pulitzer Prize. One.

Conservative media critics singled
out ABC
News and then-World News
anchor Charles
Gibson for not reporting on the ACORN videos.

Mainstream media
outlets begin reporting on ACORN videos. The New York Times published a story
on the ACORN videos on September 15, 2009, reporting: “Conservative advocates
and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing Acorn
workers, who appeared to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion. It
was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no
secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and
appointees they view as leftist.”

The CBS Evening
News first
reported on the ACORN videos on September 15. NBC’s Nightly
News and ABC’s World News first
reported on the ACORN videos on September 16.

Media reporters,
pundits credit Fox News for ACORN coverage. On the September
20, 2009, edition of CNN’s Reliable
Sources, host and Washington
Post media critic Howard Kurtz suggested that Fox News “stampeded”
the rest of the media in covering “the ACORN uproar”:

KURTZ: All right. Let me get a break
here. And when we come back, the ACORN uproar. Fox News jumps all over those
undercover videos showing ACORN employees trying to help a phony pimp and his
phony prostitute. Were the rest of the media late to this burgeoning
scandal?

[...]

KURTZ: Let me turn now to the
broader question on the role of Fox News. Let’s put up the cover of Time
magazine. The cover boy this week is Glenn Beck; the headline “Mad Man.” And he
did not talk to the magazine for this. And we talked, last week on this program,
Chris Cillizza about the Van Jones story, also pushed by a Fox White House
adviser who resigned for saying and doing controversial some things; now the
ACORN story. Do you have the feeling that mainstream or establishment news
organizations are being stampeded by Fox?

On September 20, 2009, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander
wrote:

It’s tempting to dismiss such
gimmicks. Fox News, joined by right-leaning talk radio and bloggers, often hypes
stories to apocalyptic proportions while casting competitors as too liberal or
too lazy to report the truth.

But they’re also occasionally
pumping legitimate stories. I thought that was the case with ACORN and, before
it, the Fox-fueled controversy that led to the resignation of White House
environmental adviser Van Jones.

On September 26, 2009, then-New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt
remonstrated the paper for its response to the ACORN videos, writing that
the Times “stood still” on the
story and quoted managing editor Jill Abramson saying that the paper has
“insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk
radio.”

The ACORN story
falls apart. Subsequent investigations into the
ACORN videotapes revealed that they had been heavily edited to remove
exculpatory material, and that O’Keefe and Breitbart had falsely claimed that
ACORN employees in “almost every single office” had assisted them in setting up
child prostitution rings. In fact,
several of the ACORN employees involved in the videos either refused to help
O’Keefe and Giles or contacted the
police following their meeting with the duo.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles
Hynes investigated
the videotapes and “cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing” after determining that
O’Keefe and Giles had “edited the tape to meet their agenda.”

An independent review
conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (D), who
was hired by ACORN to conduct an inquiry in part into the videos, found that
“some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was
clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of
intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that
action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the
videographers.”

In April, California Attorney
General Edmund G. Brown Jr. released a
report on the “severely
edited”
ACORN videotapes which found that “some members of the community
organizing group ACORN engaged in ‘highly inappropriate behavior,’ but committed
no violation of criminal laws.”

William Ayers

During the 2008 presidential
campaign, reports surfaced that then-candidate Barack Obama knew and had had
limited interactions with fellow Chicagoan William
Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground group, which in the 1970s
had bombed several government buildings. Right-wing bloggers and Fox News’ Sean
Hannity seized on the story, embellishing Obama’s contacts with Ayers in order
to paint him as a “radical.” Obama’s “relationship” with Ayers eventually
reached a national audience during one of the Democratic debates. It wasn’t
until months later that the media documented Obama’s largely tangential links to
Ayers, debunking the right-wing myth.

Right-wing
bloggers attack Obama-Ayers links. Conservative
bloggers seized on two media reports to attack Obama’s links to Ayers. On
February 15, 2008, Bloomberg News reported
that “Obama could face questions about his relationship with William Ayers,”
noting that Ayers “donated $200 in 2001 to Obama’s Illinois state Senate
campaign and served with him from 1999 to 2002 on the nine-member board of the
Woods Fund.” On February 22, 2008, Politico‘s Ben Smith reported that in
“1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama,
to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known
figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine
Dohrn.”

Based on these articles, right-wing
bloggers began attacking
and distorting
Ayers’ links to Obama:

• Commentary‘s John
  Podhoretz: “But here’s a thought experiment. What if John McCain had visited the
  Unabomber’s cabin? Or had been photographed with Terry Nichols? Or had stopped
  off at David Duke’s house at some point because he was gathering support and
  donors?” ["Obama's Ayers," 2/22/08]

• Stop the ACLU:
  “Obama does some nice double talk and condemns the actions of the Weather
  Underground, however he remains good friends with two of them that remain
  unrepentant for their actions.” ["Obama's Terrorist Friends," 2/23/08]

• Right Wing Nut
  House: “I am talking about the extent of the candidate’s ties to domestic
  terrorists from the 1960′s and how the American people might feel about their
  future president paling [sic] around with someone who set off bombs as a member
  of the group Weather Underground and to this day refuses to apologize for it.”
  ["Obama and the Radicals: Soulmates?" 2/23/08]

• Human
  Events‘ John Batchelor: “Will the four
  horsemen of Mr. Obama’s November, Rezko, Ayers, Rashidi and Auchi, lead to a
  similar defeat for the spectacular candidacy of Barack Obama?” ["The Obama
  Files," 2/25/08]

Hannity picks up
Ayers story. Hannity seized on the Ayers story
soon after, and mentioned Obama’s links to Ayers on an almost daily basis for
weeks afterward.

From the February 27, 2008, edition
of Fox News’ Hannity &
Colmes:

HANNITY: Bob Beckel, I want to ask
you about William Ayers. If you recall, he admitted that he was involved in the
bombings of New York City police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol building in
1971, the Pentagon in 1972. We have a report out today, ABC News via the New
York Sun that he donated to the Obama campaign. We have a report out, that Obama
visited his home as, quote, “a rite of passage when launching his political
career in the mid-1990s.” His spokesman — Barack Obama — said, “Yes, they’re
friendly. They know each other.” Does the presidential candidate for the
Democratic Party have any business being friendly with and potentially accepting
donations from a man that admits that he blew up and helped plan and set a bomb
at our Pentagon?

From the February 28, 2008, edition
of Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: There is the issue of this
guy from the Weather Underground, this guy Bill Ayers. This is a guy that admits
to being part of the bombing with the Weather Underground of the New York City
police headquarters in 1970, our Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972.
And it was reported by Jonah Goldberg, who will be here tomorrow night, that as
a right of passage, Barack Obama visited him when launching his political career
in the 1990s.

When asked about it this week of
whether or not they had a friendship, Barack Obama’s spokesperson admitted that,
in fact, they were — that they did have a friendly relationship. This is a guy
who is admitting to bombing our Pentagon, and was part of a group that declared
war on the United States. I’m sitting here thinking as an outsider, if I’m
Hillary Clinton, that’s a big issue for the American people in a post-9/11
world.

From the March 9, 2008, edition of
Hannity’s America:

HANNITY: William Ayers is a guy that
was with the Weather Underground, a group that admitted to bombing our Pentagon,
bombing our Capitol Building, bombing New York City police headquarters, said as
recently as 2001 he regrets he didn’t go further. A group that declared war
against the United States.

Barack Obama met with him when he
started his political career in the 1990s and he also went on to say about
William Ayers that he is friendly with him. You look into that camera and you
tell me why a presidential candidate should get away with being friends with an
admitted terrorist.

Hannity complains
about lack of media coverage. Soon after he began flogging the
story, Hannity began attacking the media for ignoring it.

From the April 9, 2008, edition of
Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Well, the philosophy —
because they declared war against the United States. And the philosophy was —
the Weathermen philosophy was kill all the rich people. Ayers summed — these
are Ayers’ words: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments.
Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents. That’s where it’s really at.” And
he’s unrepentant.

KARL ROVE: Right, well, and they
attacked — they attacked, as I recall, police facilities, military facilities,
U.S. government buildings. And they did so in a manner without apparent regard
for human life.

HANNITY: Yes.

ROVE: I mean, I think — I don’t
recall that people were killed or injured, but that was not the — that wasn’t
the intention. They wanted to create violence and blow things
up.

HANNITY: Karl, I first interviewed Jeremiah Wright in March of
2007. And I stayed on the issue. And it took almost a year for the mainstream
media to
pick up on the story, and it became a big story. Do you believe at some point
somebody in the mainstream media is going to examine this relationship that
Barack Obama’s campaign claims is
friendly?

From the April 15, 2008, edition of
Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: But Doug Schoen, this is
the problem. A new narrative has emerged. And it is Michelle Obama’s comments.
It’s these comments in San Francisco. It’s the unrepentant terrorist, Bill
Ayers. We’ve been covering on this program. The mainstream media has ignored it.
It’s him attending the Million Man March. Why did he attend the Million Man
March?

Stephanopoulos
talks to Hannity, asks Obama about Ayers. On the April 15,
2008, edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Hannity interviewed ABC News’
George Stephanopoulos, who was set to co-moderate the Democratic presidential
debate the following day. During that interview, Hannity suggested to
Stephanopoulos that he ask Obama about his “association with Bill Ayers, the
unrepentant terrorist from the Weather Underground.” Hannity continued:

HANNITY: When asked about it by
the Politico, [Obama campaign chief
strategist] David Axelrod said they have a friendly relationship and that they
had done a number of speeches together and that they sat on a board together. Is
that a question you might ask?

Stephanopoulos responded to Hannity:
“Well, I’m taking notes right now.”

That same day, Stephanopoulos had
appeared on The Steve Malzberg
Show, a conservative radio program broadcast out of New York City.
Malzberg also suggested that Stephanopoulos ask Obama about Ayers: “How could a
man running for the presidency of the United States possibly have anything to
do, or have anything but disdain, for a man who did what he has done to this
country?” Stephanopoulos responded: “That’s a damn good
question.”

During the April 16 debate,
Stephanopoulos asked Obama:

STEPHANOPOULOS: [F]irst a follow-up
on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A
gentleman named William Ayers — he was part of the Weather Underground in the
1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never
apologized for that, and, in fact, on 9-11, he was quoted in The New York Times
saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do
enough.”

An early organizing meeting for your
state Senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are
friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to
Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

Stephanopoulos later
denied that Hannity had influenced his questioning: “We have been
researching this for a while. … Part of what we discovered is that Sen. Obama had
never been asked directly about it, even though it’s being written about and
talked about and Republicans are signaling that this is gonna be an issue in the
general election.”

Hannity, on the April 16, 2008,
edition of Hannity & Colmes,
credited Stephanopoulos for his “tough questions” to Obama: “Finally, the media
asked him about Bill Ayers, which we have been pointing out.”

Boston
Globe: Ayers story
shows how blog chatter becomes news. In an April 18,
2008, Boston Globe article,
Joanna Weiss wrote:

The sudden national focus on the
connection between the Democratic presidential hopeful and a Vietnam-era radical
named William Ayers —
a onetime fugitive from justice who told The New York Times, “I don’t regret
setting bombs” — set
the political world abuzz. The news that Obama held a campaign event at Ayers’s
home in 1995, and served with Ayers on a Chicago community board, was either
damning or innocuous, a worthy disclosure or a sure sign of the decline of
political journalism.

But the Obama-Ayers story itself is
a case study in the ways that news jumps between blogs and traditional media,
the lingering power of network news, and the persistence of Internet conspiracy
theories. In fact, it was hard yesterday to tell which got more scrutiny: the
link between Obama and Ayers, or the link between ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
and Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Months later,
New York Times throws cold water
on Obama-Ayers story. On October 3, 2008, months after
the debate made the Ayers story national news, The New York Times published an in-depth
look into the links between Obama and Ayers. The Times reported that “the two men do not
appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the
radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers”:

At a tumultuous meeting of
anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped
found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target
the Pentagon and United States Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a
lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met
Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically
since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office,
on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde
Park neighbors.

[...]

More recently, conservative critics
who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has
misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has
dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on
education issues in Chicago that I know.”

A review of records of the schools
project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr.
Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do
not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the
radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged
in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

After then-vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin alleged that Obama “palled around” with “terrorist” Ayers,
the Associated Press reported
on October 5, 2008, that Palin’s “reference to Obama’s
relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather
Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows
they were ‘pals’ or even close when they worked on community boards years ago
and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his
career.”

“Climategate”

Climate scientists at the University
of East Anglia in Britain revealed
in November 2009 that hackers had illegally accessed a university server and
stolen thousands of private emails, which were then released publicly. Conservatives
immediately seized on the messages, taking them out of
context to accuse the scientists of lying about global warming and claiming
that the emails undermine the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic
climate change. Long after the “Climategate” smear wound its way through the
media, two independent investigations cleared the scientists of wrongdoing.

Conservatives
promote “Climategate” smears. Not long after the hacked emails
were released, conservative bloggers and media figures began attacking the
climate scientists and the science of global
warming:

• Rush Limbaugh: “By
  the way, folks, I want to give you a website to go to when you get a chance.
  It’s called ClimateDepot.com. Something fascinating has
  happened, and I was first alerted to this today by our official climatologist,
  Dr. Roy Spencer. A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU. That is
  Britain’s largest climate research institute. They are a huge proponent of
  global warming. … I don’t know if the jury’s still out on that, but more and
  more people are picking up on this. The whole thing as we’ve — I’ve
  instinctively known this from the get-go 20 years ago. The whole thing’s made
  up.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/20/09]

• Atlas Shrugs’ Pam
  Geller: “How hard will the corrupt activist media work to bury this explosive
  story? Many of us have exposed the hoax of climate change as revealed by
  legitimate, responsible scientists for years, but still the elites rob us blind
  and torment us with legislation, regulation on ‘the greatest threat facing humanity’ (akbar!).” ["Global Climate
  Change Hoax: The Greatest Fraud in Human History," 11/20/09]

Fox News becomes
“Climategate” central. The “Climategate” smears quickly
jumped to Fox News, which assumed the leading
role in promoting the story. Several Fox News personalities attempted to obscure the fact that
the emails were stolen from the University of East Anglia, instead referring to
the messages as “leaked,” “revealed,” or “uncovered.” Fox News reporters and
commentators alike promoted falsehoods and distortions:

• Glenn Beck: “This
  is what appears to be going on behind the scenes and literally trillions of
  dollars of policy decisions are being based on what these guys are telling us.
  If your gut said, ‘Wait a minute, this global warming thing, it sounds like a
  scam,’ well, I think you’re seeing it now. We told you this was going on,
  without proof, because we listened to our gut. You’d never believe me, but once
  again, here we are with yet another brand new reality.” [Glenn Beck, 11/23/09]

• Sean Hannity: “Now
  we find out that this institute, in fact, was hiding from the people of Great
  Britain and the world the fact that climate change is a hoax, something I’ve
  been saying for a long time. Why would they try to hide it if there wasn’t
  another agenda?” [Hannity, 11/24/09]

• Fox News
  correspondent James Rosen: “[Rep. Darrell] Issa and others also referenced ‘Climate-gate,’ the scandal that has rocked the scientific world with
  revleations that some leading proponents of global warming have manipulated
  findings, sought to suppress contradictory evidence, and destroyed more than 150
  years worth of raw climate data.” [Special
  Report, 12/8/09]

Media
conservatives pressure broadcast networks to cover
“Climategate.” As Fox News’ coverage grew more
intense, conservative groups began complaining that other media outlets were not
covering “Climategate.” The Media Research Center mounted a campaign to pressure
the broadcast networks to cover “the great and growing Climategate scandal,”
issuing press
releases marking the days that had elapsed since the “scandal”
broke.

Networks
eventually cover “Climategate,” propagate misinformation. All three
of the broadcast networks eventually covered “Climategate,” and all three helped
to spread the right-wing smears upon which the story was
built:

• On the December 9,
  2009, edition of ABC’s World
  News, correspondent David Wright reported that the
  emails show scientists using a “trick to hide the decline in temperatures.” In
  fact, the “trick” mentioned in the emails referred to tree-ring data, not
  actual temperatures, and several scientists said that the word “trick” was being
  taken out of context and made to sound deceptive and
  incriminating.

• On the December 4,
  2009, edition of NBC’s Nightly
  News, anchor Brian Williams asked: “Have the books
  been cooked on climate change?” Reporter Anne Thompson said the emails “show
  climate scientists massaging the data” but offered no evidence to support that
  claim.

• On the December 5
  broadcast of the CBS Evening News,
  anchor Jeff Glor asked: “[D]id some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate
  change look worse than it is?” CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier claimed that the emails
  “have cast doubts on the very science” of climate change and asserted that the
  emails “seem to show that some of the world’s top experts decided to exclude or
  manipulate some research that didn’t help prove global warming exists.” Dozier
  ignored evidence contradicting this assertion.

Independent
investigations clear scientists involved. On July 1,
The Washington Post reported
on a June report released by a committee of scientists, assembled by Penn State
in the wake of the email theft, to investigate whether one of the scientists
involved in “Climategate,” Michael Mann, had engaged in “research misconduct.”
According to the Post:

The Investigatory Committee, after
careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance
to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of
Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.

More specifically, the Investigatory
Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he
participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from
accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or
reporting research, or other scolarly activities.

The decision of the Investigatory
Committee was unanimous.

On July 7, the Associated Press reported
that an “independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from
one of the world’s leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the
scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global
uproar dubbed ‘Climategate.’ ” According to the AP:

The inquiry by former U.K. civil
servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia’s
Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption
in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year.
But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with
critics.

“We find that their rigor and
honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” Russell said. “But we do find that
there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of
openness.”

Russell’s inquiry into the scandal
is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the
e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November,
right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.

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