Topic: WorldNetDaily
How utterly craven and desperate is WorldNetDaily to smear Barack Obama? It's lending what little credibility it has to promoting an almost assuredly nonexistent tape of Michelle Obama purportedly haranguing an almost assuredly nonexistent "news agency."
An Oct. 16 article (unbylined -- it seems that WND's own writers lack enough faith in API to actually put a name to this) parrots African Press International's claim that "the contents of the tapes if made public may change the political atmosphere in America for ever." Indeed, WND uncritically parrots everything API has to say, including its claim that Michelle Obama called API "because of a Nairobi contact that did not like the way API was covering Barack Obama using information collected from American media outlets. The Nairobi contact prevailed upon Mrs. Obama to talk to API."
While WND buries denials by the Obama campaign, as well as by National Review's Byron York, in the article, it ignores other views on the subject by its fellow right-wingers:
- "It smelled like seafood to us," stated Little Green Footballs.
- "Not sure how she would have found a number to call them with since they don't provide a contact number anywhere," said JammieWearingFool.
- "A simple search on a AllAfrica.com, an African news agency that aggregates hundreds of African newspapers that is based in Washington D.C shows that [API] were not mentioned anywhere," said the pro-Palin Change & Experience blog.
Further, an Oct. 15 ABC News post by Jake Tapper -- currently linked to from WND's front page but not strangely referenced anywhere in the WND article -- makes an important point: "The Obama campaign does not tend to directly engage fringe Web sitesmaking wild charges, and if they were to do so, they certainly wouldn't have Michelle Obama make the call."
Further, as Sadly, No! points out:
[T]here is no such thing as the news agency, African Press International. It is in fact an unbelievably cheap-looking Wordpress blog, operated by a pseudonymous person from God-knows-where, that steals daily news stories from the African Press Agency, strips the attributions from them, and substitutes its own name. This enterprise also features a phony charity impersonating an actual charity.
WND has displayed no evidence that it has ever made an attempt to investigate the background of API or "Chief Editor Korir."
Joseph Farah, Jerome Corsi and Co., we can easily assume, are most desperately praying to their God, hoping against hope that -- in the face of all signs they have most assuredly seen -- this story is even slightly true. Then again, it promoted the false "whitey" story too.
If, as it appears, it is a fake (not unlike Corsi's Kenya documents), WND deserves to be shamed out of the journalism business. Unless it thinks it can convince people that lies are the new "journalism."
UPDATE: Indeed, Corsi has been begging API to post the audio.
