Obama camp creates website to fight SMEARS, LIES & RUMORS
By Scott Helman, Globe Staff | June 13, 2008
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Senator Barack Obama, dogged throughout the presidential race by Internet-driven smears, launched an aggressive campaign yesterday to fight them head on, betting that the political benefit of debunking damaging rumors outweighs the risk of making them more visible.
The centerpiece of the effort is a website, fightthesmears.com, which Obama's campaign will use to draw notice to untruths about him, his background, religion, and family and prove them false. Obama's decision to counterattack reflects a determination not to be defined by political opponents, as past Democratic nominees have - most recently in 2004 when Senator John F. Kerry was "swift boated" by critics who attacked his war record.
"The Obama campaign isn't going to let dishonest smears spread across the Internet unanswered," spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. "It's not enough to just know the truth. We have to be proactive and fight back."
Launching the website breaks what has been a conventional mindset in American politics: that giving attention to rumors only dignifies and broadcasts them to more voters. But the rising influence of blogs - and the attention more mainstream media outlets now pay to them - makes it increasingly untenable for candidates to ignore swirling speculation, even if it's baseless.
Since kicking off his presidential bid 16 months ago, Obama has employed the Internet as no candidate ever has, raising tens of millions of dollars online and giving grass-roots supporters novel tools to organize for his campaign. But the Illinois senator has also seen e-mail and the Web used as weapons against him, and his campaign yesterday sent a clear signal that it will not stand by and let that happen in the general election.
"This is a much more aggressive embrace of the Internet than lots of other candidates are comfortable with," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "It's risky in a way to acknowledge these smears, because you could give more power to them. But Obama is saying, in the risk-reward calculation, it's better that people have all this information and be able to assess it themselves than to have it hidden in the shadows."
And there has been plenty in those shadows: that Obama is a Muslim (he is not); that he was sworn into office on the Koran (the Bible was used); and that he does not say the Pledge of Allegiance with his hand over his heart (not true). Late yesterday afternoon, the campaign posted a copy of Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii to disprove claims by conservative bloggers that he was hiding something about his name or place of birth.
Each of those rumors is dispatched on fightthesmears.com, but the most prominent item - and the breaking point for the campaign to create the website - pertains to Obama's wife, Michelle, and rampant claims on right-leaning blogs, TV, and radio in recent weeks that she once said "whitey," a derogatory term for whites, during an appearance at the Obamas' controversial former church, Trinity United Church of Christ, on Chicago's South Side.
The website details not only the rumor, but its ancestry, highlighting claims by bloggers and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh about the existence of a video of Michelle Obama uttering the word, along with a report of the alleged event on Fox News Channel.
"No such tape exists," the campaign says on the website. "Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word."
After he secured the Democratic nomination last week, Obama was asked by a reporter on his campaign plane about rumors of the video. He scolded the media for fueling "scurrilous rumors."
"There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it," he said. "That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."
Obama told advisers that night that the campaign needed a better way to fight misinformation, Time magazine reported yesterday.
The new website invites supporters to e-mail others about the fallacy of whatever rumors arise. Visitors can load contacts from their e-mail address books to help "push back with the truth."
The effort is an extension of websites that Obama and Hillary Clinton used during the primary campaign to fact-check claims made by opponents. Obama's version, factcheck.barackobama.com, deals with some of the same issues as the new website.
Lawrence Lessig, founder and director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said Obama was wise to launch such a site, because the past strategy of ignoring rumors was predicated on the filter of the mainstream press.
"Today, responsible news organizations are actually being pushed to cover issues which they wouldn't have covered 20 years ago, simply because the blogosphere and the Internet are covering precisely those issues," said Lessig, who has advised Obama's campaign on technology.
Voters are increasingly ignoring those filters anyway. Many now get political news and analysis exclusively online - from blogs, political websites, or from e-mail chains forwarded by friends, family, and coworkers.
The challenge Obama faces in batting down rumors is especially steep, owing to an unconventional upbringing and heritage that some voters across the country have said make them leery. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia and his father came from Kenya.
Tamera Albrecht, 44, a Clinton supporter from Bloomington, Ind., explained at a Clinton rally in Terre Haute, Ind., last month that she would not vote for Obama because of what she had read about him online. "I believe what I read on the Internet," she said.
Obama's Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, knows full well the power that unfounded rumors hold in an overheated political environment.
Some analysts believe McCain lost the South Carolina GOP primary in 2000 - and possibly the presidential nomination - partly on rumors spread by opponents that he had fathered a mixed-race child out of wedlock. McCain has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh named Bridget, and before this year's South Carolina primary his campaign circulated fliers of his wife, Cindy, carrying her from Mother Teresa's orphanage - an attempt to end the gossip for good.
Specialists say political rumor-mongering has been around for decades, but that, given the widely available tools of electronic communication, it is easier than ever to spread mischief. Rainie said a "reputation economy" has replaced a "control economy," in which politicians can no longer avoid controversy by assuming they have sole control over their message.
"The best way to live in this environment is to provide the best information, the highest quality information, the most accurate information in the most transparent way," he said.
Lessig added that Obama's new website will have a "vaccination" effect, getting voters used to the idea that everything they read about Obama might not be true.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com. |
