The growth of the internet over recent years has changed the face of political campaigns in our country. Not only do candidates increasingly present their messages to the voters through their websites, but independent groups try to influence the course of the election through websites, ads, e-mail campaigns, and videos on YouTube.
There has been an unprecedented amount of mudslinging in this election, much of it coming from the McCain campaign and its supporters. Some of it shows up in your e-mail inbox – and you may get some of it on your phone. “Push polls”, where the caller masquerades as a pollster but it really calling to spread propaganda and smears against the opposing candidates – is a Karl Rove dirty-trick tactic that has reappeared this year. Other unwelcome intrusions are "robocalls", whereby a phonecall with a negative political message comes to you from a machine rather than from a human being.
If you want to check out the truth of any of the political rumors or attacks you encounter, a good source is FactCheck.org. This is a nonprofit, nonpartisan website that describes its goal as “[reducing] the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” It is a project of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Another useful site is PolitiFact.com, a service of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.
The rumors that have been circulated against Sen. Obama via e-mail include: Obama is a Muslim; he and his wife Michelle are radical extremists who hate white people; he’s not American; he refuses to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem. Over the summer, e-mails circulated with the nonsensical claim that when Obama went to Afghanistan to meet the troops, he refused to meet the troops. Some of these e-mails lie about what Obama wrote in his two books – lies that can easily be disproved simply by reading the books. But the people who write these e-mails rely on the fact that most of the people who see the e-mails will not read the books.
The originators of these e-mails are often untraceable and unaccountable for the content of their messages, much of which is deliberately false, but aimed at people who may not know how or where to check the facts. It’s difficult for a candidate to respond to such attacks, since it’s hard to know what rumors are being spread through e-mails sent to thousands of voters, then forwarded to thousands more.
However, in an October 13 New York Times article, a major media source finally exposed the identity of the man who started the lie that Obama is a secret Muslim. His name is Andy Martin, a shady character on the far-right fringe with a long history of outrageous claims, anti-Jewish smears, and frivolous lawsuits.
Besides the attacks in negative ads and e-mail messages, Obama is subjected to non-stop attacks, many of them outright lies, by right-wing radio talk jocks and other Republican media such as Fox News.
The Obama campaign is trying to rebut these attacks through a special section of its website, called FightTheSmears.com. It includes objective information from neutral, reliable sources such as FactCheck.org, the Army Times, the Associated Press, and other news media.