This is the first diary of a two-part series on John McCain's anti-Obama smear campaign.
This diary begins a discussion of contributions by MSM to the propagation of political propaganda and the injection of its biases into the national political debate.
The latest NBC/WSJ Survey conducted July 18-21, 2008 was published on July 23, 2008.
Following the release of the NBC/WSJ survey, this writer conducted an unscientific survey of MSM including cable news channels like MSNBC, CNN and Fox News and the week ending Sunday news programs to assess their treatment of the survey results. My unscientific survey revealed that nearly all TV news coverage centered only on three survey results and, whether deliberately or not, the media deemphasized or ignored at least 2 critical details of the survey's findings; that Obama retains a 13 percentage point lead over McCain when measured in a 4 way race which includes Ralph Nader and Bob Barr and Obama also leads by 6 percentage points in a 2 way race between himself and John McCain.
Television and print media focused on three survey responses: that voters think Obama is a riskier candidate than McCain by nearly a 2:1 margin; that less than 50% believe Obama shares their "values" and "background" and that there are concerns Obama is too inexperienced.
Another overlooked survey item was the fact that the number of voters who believe Obama is a Muslim has decreased. The percentage of voters who now believe Barack Obama is a Muslim has dropped by 5 percentage points since the last poll of 4 months ago.
Asked open-ended (without prompts) to identify Obama's religion, 48 percent said he held a Protestant faith, an 11 percentage point increase from March, and up from 18 percent in WSJ-NBC polling in December. Another 2 percent said he is Catholic. (Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ.)
The percentage labeling him a Muslim in the new poll stands at 8 percent, down slightly from 13 percent four months ago. About four in 10, 39 percent, said they are not sure about his religion.
By cherry picking which survey results would be injected into the current political debate and by ignoring portions of the survey that would have provided a more balanced perspective of its results, MSM is either deliberately or unwittingly skewing the current political debate and denying the public the right to make informed decisions about the upcoming presidential elections.
Since announcing his intention to run for the U.S. Presidency on NBC News’ Meet the Press on October of 2006, Barack Obama’s campaign has been plagued by unrelenting smear and whisper campaigns aimed at derailing his election campaign. Voter impressions of Obama were, in many cases, molded by deliberate and malicious smears and whisper campaigns aimed at impugning Obama’s character, questioning his patriotism and derailing his candidacy.
During Obama’s highly successful week-long trip overseas politically motivated attacks against him by Senator John McCain, the GOP and McCain surrogates took a significant turn. They became very personal and increasingly contemptuous. The most recent attacks are intentionally Swiftboat-like and they are directly related to the ongoing anti-Obama viral email smear and whisper campaigns.
The McCain campaign is deliberately trying to amplify the subtle and oftentimes overt messaging of whispered and viral email rumors, innuendos and outright lies that have circulated about Obama for 2 years.
On Saturday, the McCain campaign launched a new TV ad alleging that Obama does not care about U.S. troops and in essence questioned his patriotism. According to July 28, 2008 piece by Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin of Politico.com,
"McCain’s new ad dovetailed with the latest viral e-mail aimed at Obama, a widely circulated — though later recanted — missive from a Utah National Guard officer stationed in Afghanistan, Joseph Porter, who wrote that Obama "blew ... off" and "shunned" soldiers during his visit there."
Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant said of the new anti-Obama smear ad: "It really is the first time in the campaign where you have had the Obama online smears, of which there have been many, matching up with the actual paid negative advertising of a candidate."
OBAMA'S FIGHT THE SMEARS CAMPAIGN
On June 12, 2008 the Obama campaign announced a new "Fight the Smears" Web site dedicated to debunking anti-Obama myths and refuting viral email smear campaigns and whisper campaigns while also identifying, where possible the purveyors of character assassination and fear mongering.
The new Obama Web site joins other Snopes-like myth busting Web sites aimed at correcting the record.At a time when efforts to reverse the damaging effects of the anti-Obama viral email and whisper campaigns appear to be making headway, the anti-Obama Swift-boat campaign by John McCain is being revved up. Whether the Obama campaign and other Progressive Web sites will be successful in the long run at undermining the viral smear campaigns and the direct attacks by John McCain remain to be seen.