AP Papers Need to Stop Smearing Obama's Patriotism

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 3:04 PM on February 25, 2008.

It was pretty much world-record speed with which the smears against Barack Obama's patriotism alley-ooped from the right wing attack machine into the pages of legitimate media, neatly laundered into the AP by Nedra Pickler. It then quickly leapfrogged onto CNN where a poll inquired as to whether Obama had sufficient patriotism to be president.

It's incredible that a news source which purports to be legitimate would embrace and perpetuate this kind of stuff; common sense dictates that it should stay where it was birthed, in the right wing sewer. Nevertheless, we're in a rather fluid time, when the boundaries are being established about what is going to be regarded as acceptable for the rest of the race, so it's time to come down hard and set the limits. What Pickler did is out of bounds.

Aravosis:

AP knows damn well that Obama doesn't hate America. This isn't a he-said-she-said. It's a case where AP is genuflecting to the Republicans and regurgitating their crap in a way Pickler and her fellow reporters wouldn't dare do if the victim were Republican.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Obama's response was superb, but the fact remains that he should not be subject to these kinds of open smears in the first think.

The AP probably doesn't care a whole lot about what you think, but it does care what the papers who subscribe to their wire service think. So we've set up a page where you can plug in your zip code and automatically send an email to the papers in your area who syndicate the AP and let them know this is beneath what you expect their coverage to be -- for this election cycle and beyond.

Especially if you live in some state that's less likely to get a lot of attention like New York or California, please take time to send an email. We want to blanket the country as broadly as possible and let every paper know that this kind of journalism is unacceptable -- and that you're watching.

Send a letter here.

And Hekebolos has a diary up at DailyKos about this action, so if you're a Kossak please go over and hit "recommend."

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Tagged as: media, obama, patriotism, greenwald, pickler

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.