Tim Russert's Final MSNBC Report: On Obama's site aimed at fighting rumor and gossip

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: Tim Russert's Final MSNBC Report
By E&P Staff
Published: June 13, 2008

NEW YORK Less than two hours before word of his death, by a heart attack, this afternoon, MSNBC on its web site posted a Q & A with the "Meet the Press" host concerning yesterday's launching of an Obama site aimed at fighting rumor and gossip.

An excerpt follows. It is up at www.msnbc.com

*

MSNBC: Tim, www.fightthesmears.com is a web site launched by the Barack Obama campaign to combat potentially damaging rumor about the candidate and his wife, Michelle. Is this necessary? How big of a problem is this really?

Tim Russert: It’s amazing how much the Internet has changed our lives. People get emails that make accusations without foundation and they are circulated around the country within seconds and suddenly become topics of conversations around water coolers or in lunchrooms.

I remember being in Indianapolis covering the Indiana primary and a man came up to me and said he wasn’t going to vote for Senator Obama because he was very concerned about the comments made by Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor. I said, “That’s interesting. As a reporter, I’m curious what comments particularly bothered you?” He said, “Well, I can’t think of any that come to mind, but I also read on the Internet that he’s a Muslim.” And I said, “Now wait a minute. You can’t have both. You can’t be offended by his Christian minister and then say he’s a Muslim. You’ve got to pick one.”

But that just underscores what we’re dealing with in this modern era.

Now I’m told there’s a counter organization with a very similar name that is going to be positioned and posted to spread the rumors, so that people that go to the Internet to get clarification will go to the wrong web site and get confused.

It’s a virus. You have bloggers on both sides, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats all trying to utilize this vehicle without any kind of fact checking and without any kind of editorial control.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003816533

[blogslut]

1. Mr. Russert set a tone

Because of his prominence, because of the influence his Sunday morning program had on the general discourse, he will be missed. I pray that commentators, pundits and anchors across the world, realize how desperately the public needs newspeople like Tim Russert. Respectful, even-handed and sincerely driven to inform.

[Indenturedebtor]

2. BS we have fact checking

It's the Pukes that have no love of the truth. That's why they're pukes.

[tridim]

3. fightthesmears.org has been taken down

Or at least the parody site has.

Count that as a victory for Russert, although I bet Obama's legal team had a hand in it too.

[blogslut]

4. Actually, I think the owner took it down by his own choice

He came on here and said this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6353326&mesg_id=6353629

There was no organization behind the site. It was an adult webmaster that took advantage of the fact that the Obama campaign failed to register all the TLD permutations for fightthesmears.com.

[babylonsister]

5. One question: how often did Russert defend Obama against

the two week debacle that was Reverend Wright vs. contributing to it?

[FrenchieCat]

7. none....

but then, the media gets to decide when they are good and when they are bad.

[uppityperson]

6. k&r for getting the rumors out and directly addressing them since people are fearful/stupid