Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's reporting and commentary on the Obama campaign is already littered with lies, so it's no surprise that WND would be peddling yet another one.
An Oct. 10 WND article by Drew Zahn uncritically accepts the premise of the creator of an anti-Obama ad that Obama was "mocking the Bible" during a 2006 speech. Zahn makes no effort to explain the full context of Obama's statements, and he selectively quotes from the Obama campaign's criticism of the ad to avoid mentioning damning its creator.
While Zahn quotes from Obama's speech to offer the "immediate context" of his words, he fails to quote from the Obama's campaign's statement that the speech "actually celebrates the role of people of faith in public life and offers nuanced thoughts on the intersection of religion and politics." Zahn does quote the Obama statement that "The video takes 5 sentences out of a 4,500-word speech Barack gave in 2006 completely out of context to stoke division and hatred," but he refuses to admit that that's exactly what the ad does.
Zahn curiously doesn't quote from the ad itself, which falsely claimed that Obama "mocked and ridiculed the books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, even laughing at the Sermon on the Mount, taking those passages painfully out of context." Of course, taking Obama painfully out of context is exactly what thet ad's creator does in his attack.
Instead, Zahn focuses on the Obama campaign's criticism of the creator, Stepehn Marks of some 527 group called "pH For America," with Zahn paraphrasing the campaign's claim as being that Marks is "trying to scam Christians out of their money by promising to air a spot that will never be broadcast." In response, Zahn writes: "WND has confirmed, however, that – true to his word – the ad's creator purchased air time for the commercial on television stations in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Sources at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh and a cable company servicing Erie told WND that the ad had been aired on several occasions."
But Zahn fails to mention that the Obama campaign noted in its statement that the ad did actually air: "At the beginning of October, the scammer behind this deceptive home video announced that he finally got his 'ad' on TV — but it turns out it only aired one time, at 2:00 a.m., on a single station in Pittsburgh."
Zahn further fails to mention that Obama's campaign pointed out that Marks' ads are "missing the required legal disclaimer at the end saying who funded them." Remember, WND made a massive deal earlier this year accusing the Obama campaign of running an "illegal lottery" because a promotion in which donors were eligible to win a trip to the Democratic National Convention initially mistakenly lacked the required mechanism to allow non-donors to enter.
Sadly, it's not surprising that WND continues to lie about Obama. It is surprising that they would do it so transparently that its jeopardizes what little credibility it has.
