Monday's Times hits hard on a story posted on Insight (an online magazine published by the same company that owns the Washington Times newspaper) alleging that Sen. Hillary Clinton's camp leaked rumors aboutthe madrassa (a Muslim school) Sen. Barack Obama attended when he lived in Indonesia as a child. Not incidentally, both Democratic senators are competing for the 2008 presidential nomination.
David Kirkpatrick gained A1 for"Feeding [1] [1]Frenzy for a Big Story, Even if It's False [1]."
Right from the beginning, Kirkpatrick doesn't shirk from smearing Insight with the term "smear.":
"Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters' sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters....The Clinton-Obama article followed a series of inaccurate or hard-to-verify articles on Insight and its predecessor magazine about politics, the Iraq war or the Bush administration, including a widely discussed report on the Insight Web site that President Bush's relationship with his father was so strained that they were no longer speaking to each other about politics."
Yet the Times itself cited Insight in an August 10, 2006 story by Helene Cooper [2]critical of Condoleezza Rice:
"Ms. Rice has been sharply criticized by some conservatives for pushing Israel too far to end its military operations in Lebanon. 'Dump Condi: Foreign policy conservatives charge State Dept. has hijacked Bush agenda,' read the headline July 25 in an online version of Insight Magazine, published by The Washington Times."