Eric Boehlert: Fox News and Jerome Corsi, living in the past

[meegbear]

It sure felt like déjà vu all over again, didn't it?

No election watcher could forget the summer of 2004, when Fox News repeatedly invited Swift Boat author John O'Neill onto cable prime time and allowed him to air his scurrilous allegations about Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War record. Even before the partisan Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group unveiled its infamous television ads, it was on Fox News where the controversy was birthed. It was Fox News that allowed O'Neill a mostly unobstructed platform on August 10, 17, 19, and 24, 2004, to libel Kerry and to gin up a controversy that eventually swamped the Democratic candidate for most of that crucial summer month.

Then, almost exactly four years later to the dates (on July 31, August 3, 12, and 14), Fox News presented its White House campaign sequel. It welcomed O'Neill's Swift Boat writing partner, Jerome Corsi, to publicize his new attack book, The Obama Nation. Laying out his fever-swamp allegations about Obama's drug use and his supposed connections to Islam, Corsi enjoyed the type of national exposure, courtesy of Fox News, that every author craves.

It was an audience that helped propel The Obama Nation to No. 1 on the bestsellers list, which then ignited wide-scale mainstream coverage for Corsi and his book.

In other words, everything was going according to plan. The sequel had been set up -- had been marketed -- just like the Swift Boat predecessor, and now all conservatives had to do was sit back and watch the fun, as the Obama campaign became engulfed in Corsi-led controversy.

Right?

It hasn't worked that way. The Obama Nation's allegations, as slight and flimsy as they are, have taken a back seat to questions about Corsi's own credibility. In fact, journalists have likely spent more time dissecting the errors in Obama Nation and highlighting Corsi's controversial path, including the hateful, bigoted items he used to post in online forums, than they have focusing on the allegations Corsi wanted to broadcast.

As the conservative National Review Online noted with frustration, "The media narrative thus becomes 'Corsi refuted' rather than 'Obama embattled.' "

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http://mediamatters.org/columns/200808190001

[BOSSHOG]

1. We can't any of this "refutation" nonsense

Its just a bunch of evil liberals trying to take the first amendment rights away from a fine patriotic american citizen with values. So what if his book isn't a hundred percent accurate, this is America he's free to be a fuckwad. And one wonders why limbaugh and hannity fear the fairness doctrine almost as much as bush and cheney fear swearing to tell the truth.