Topic: NewsBusters
A Jan. 10 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston howls that the Anchorage Daily News is "continuing to pursue the idiotic and insulting claim that Sarah is not the real mother of son Trig," calling it a "ridiculous conspiracy theory that only idiots, hatemongers and fools could believe" and accusing the paper of "spreading hateful rumors about Governor Palin." Huston then claimed that the Daily News editor "feigned innocence and points his finger at bloggers and people on the left that have persisted with their own interest in this stupid story."
Huston's rantings might be taken seriously if his employer had not taken part in promoting ridiculous conspiracy theories about Barack Obama -- namely, the one about Obama's birth certificate.
NewsBusters' P.J. Gladnick wrote several posts promoting the supposed birth certificate controversy, most recently on Oct. 23, and comment threads on NewsBusters posts are replete with references to it. At no point does he, or any other NewsBusters writer, expose the false nature of it.
Huston also misrepresents what Daily News executive editor Pat Dougherty has written about the controversy. Huston apparently just copied-and-pasted the same thing an anti-McClatchy (the Daily News' owner) blog did from Dougherty's blog on the issue, that the goal was "report the facts of Trig's birth thoroughly enough to kill the nonsense once and for all," as well as parts of a press release from Palin's office criticizing the paper. But neither Huston nor the anti-McClatchy blog noted the following response, which Dougherty said he sent to Palin:
Lisa Demer started reporting. She received very little cooperation in her efforts from the parties who, in my judgment, stood to benefit most from the story, namely you and your family. Even so, we reported the matter as thoroughly as we could. Several weeks ago, when we considered the information Lisa had gathered, we decided we didn't have enough of a story to accomplish what we had hoped. Lisa moved on to other topics and we haven't decided whether the idea is worth any further effort.
Even the birth of your grandson may not dissuade the Trig conspiracy theorists from their beliefs. It strikes me that if there is never a clear, contemporaneous public record of what transpired with Trig's birth, that may actually ensure that the conspiracy theory never dies. Time will tell.
First, no story has, in fact, recently been published by the Daily News on the subject, which means Palin and Huston are attacking the Daily News for simply asking questions.
Second, Huston fails to acknowledge the fact that Palin is refusing to answer those questions, which helps to fuel the "conspiracy theory" among those people he likens to Holocaust deniers. As we've heard from the likes of WorldNetDaily regarding the Obama birth certificate non-controversy: If it can be so easily proven that Sarah Palin is Trig's mother, why doesn't she, you know, prove it?
Does Huston think Obama should release his full birth certificate? If so, he has no standing to complain about the conspiracy theories of others, or to defend Palin for withholding information.
UPDATE: Huston has written at Renew America that the birth certificate issue is irrelevant because "the will of the people is supreme": "Obama's foreign birth, if it comes to be true, will undermine his presidency. But better to have a single president's legitimacy undermined due to his actions than to undermine the entire electoral process." But as near as we can tell, he has not shared this opinion with his NewsBusters readers.
