My family isn’t the sharpest set of tools in the shed. They’re often one suit short of a full deck of cards. So it didn’t surprise me when my grandmother came to me yesterday very upset saying she wanted to know why no one told her Obama wasn’t born in the United States when she voted for him last year.
“If I had to know he was unqualified, I wouldn’t have voted,” she said.
I told her it was a lie, and why did she think it was true?
“Well Donald Trump says it’s true and it’s all over the news,” she said.
All over the news.
My grandmother asked me because she saw the story on ABC and since I used to work there, she thought I would know about the story, or something.
I noticed later on that Jake Tapper, who has been covering the “story” tweeted this a week or so again;
Tweeps saying we shouldn’t cover the birther crap, I hear ya, but what is the responsibility of media if untruths persist and if public figures comment on the nonsense? It’s a double-edged sword but as long as report the facts I think we need wade in.
The media’s responsibility should be to not allow people, even public figures, who keep speaking untruths to be able to speak them louder. You’re giving them a soapbox, regardless of whether or not you’re debunking them.
The problem, Jake (who I know on an acquantance level from my time at ABC) is by allowing Donald Trump and others to express this crap on national TV, you are festering doubt in the minds of the public. You’re not going to change the minds of those who believe birther bullshit, you’re going to take people who don’t know about it, like my grandmother, and allow her to think that the claims have some merit. Someone like Donald Trump, whom she may not like but recognizes as a smart human being, is saying something, why would it be a lie? She sees that and thinks “maybe it’s true.”
If Paris Hilton said tomorrow that Jews caused 9/11, you wouldn’t wade into the story and give her a soapbox, you would call her an idiot and an anti-Semite, declare her celebrity status revoked and move on. You wouldn’t do a “he said, she said” debate. You’d shut her up.
By talking about this nonsense, you’re giving merit to it. People like my grandmother think if something makes the news, it has merit.
Ignore the birthers.
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