Topic: WorldNetDaily
For something that has never been proven to be true, WorldNetDaily has sure jumped on the bandwagon of promoting the never-verified claim that the Obama administration threatened to shut down Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base if Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson didn't vote for health care reform.
A Dec. 16 WND article by Joe Kovacs treated the rumor as fact. While Kovacs noted that "Both the White House and Nelson are denying any such threat ever existed," he ignored evidence that the instigator of the claim, the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, is backtracking on it. As Media Matters has noted, on the Dec. 16 edition of Glenn Beck's TV show -- which aired before Kovac's article was posted -- Goldfarb retracted his earlier claim that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was behind the purported threat.
WND has also hidden other doubts about the claim, even by its own reporters. In a Dec. 17 interview with Radio America's Greg Corombos, Republican Sen. Kit Bond said the claim was a "rumor" that "we haven't confirmed." Yet the headline linking to the interview from WND's front page was a separate Bond quote, "Total blackmail – the worst kind of Chicago politics." Nothing was highlighted regarding Bond's statement about the unverified nature of the rumor.
As if to demonstrate further that WND cares nothing about reporting facts if they don't conflict with its anti-Obama hate campaign -- er, "worldview," Kovacs goes on to note that "Despite the denials, some WND readers have expressed outrage if a threat were indeed made."
Who cares what anybody has to say about a rumor? WorldNetDaily does -- if it can be used to smear Obama.
That's how much it hates Obama. That's the height of irresponsible journalism. But then, irresponsible journalism is the WND way.
