August 14, 2008 10:21 PM
Tracking our Obama troubles
My column this week recounts the problems caused by a poorly reported eight-word sentence in a short Web story on Sen. Barack Obama. You can follow the twists and turns of the story here.
Here's the story that caused the uproar.
Here's the blogger who contacted us initially about our unattributed assertion about Obama: "Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship." And here's the page where you'll find her link to the Rocky's story.
We e-mailed Obama campaign headquarters about this issue after an exchange with texasdarlin.
Here's the e-mail we received back from them.
-----Original Message-----
From: Obama for America [mailto:info@barackobama.com]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 6:39 PM
To: Trowbridge, Tony
Subject: Media Request Submitted
Dear Anthony Trowbridge,
Thank you so much for your interview request. It is now in our system and our communications team will follow-up with you when we have a better idea of your request's status. We understand the difficulties a delay in response may cause and certainly appreciate your patience.
If you need to follow-up with our team before you hear from us, please email media@barackobama.com. However, we will touch base with you as soon as we have an update.
Best,
Communications Team
Obama for America
www.barackobama.com
(By the way: as vaunted as the Obama folks are for running a good campaign operation, we still have not heard back from them with a specific response to our question. And that's more than a week after our request.)
By Monday many bloggers were linking to the Rocky's story. Here's one example.
And traffic on the story was soaring, ultimately hitting almost 18,000 for the day.
Late that afternoon I received this e-mail from Colorado Media Matters, a non profit organization that monitors what it perceives as conservative bias in the media.
From: Serena Woods [mailto:swoods@mediamatters.org]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 3:55 PM
To: Goeken, Deb; Temple, John
Subject: Correction Request
I wanted to drop you a quick note regarding an August 6 online news article from RockyMountainNews.com titled "Things you might not know about Barack Obama." The article repeated a claim that Obama has been a dual citizen of the United States and Kenya since 1963, but provided no evidence beyond listing as its sources for the article the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Biography.com, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The article appears to have printed verbatim from the IMDB profile for Obama the entry: "Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship." IMDB did not cite a source for its information -- which it listed under the heading "Trivia" -- but according to the U.S. Department of State, "Kenya does not officially recognize dual nationality." Since the News posted the August 6 online article listing purported "facts" about the candidate, the dual-citizenship claim has been repeated by conservative blogs such as Gateway Pundit and FreeRepublic, citing the News as the source of the information. However, on its Kenya web page, the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs states: "Kenya does not officially recognize dual nationality." Moreover, Kenya's constitution explicitly prohibits dual citizenship and nullifies Kenyan citizenship of any 21-year-old who is also the citizen of another country and who has not formally renounced citizenship of that other country:
I respectfully request that you correct the article in the next edition of The Rocky Mountain News and that the online version of the story be updated with a correction as well so that those reading the article online are made aware of the oversight:
I appreciate you taking the time to address our concerns and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Serena Woods
Communications and Marketing Director
Colorado Media Matters
303.815.7693
Rocky made unsupported claim that Obama is a citizen of U.S. and Kenya
Summary: An online Rocky Mountain News article claimed without any supporting evidence that Sen. Barack Obama holds "both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship." The claim in the news article, which had no byline, mirrored material posted on the Internet Movie Database website and has since been posted on several conservative blogs. However, the News did not report that the U.S. State Department's says "Kenya does not officially recognize dual nationality" or that Kenya's constitution explicitly prohibits dual citizenship.
In an August 6 online news article headlined "Things you might not know about Barack Obama," the Rocky Mountain News repeated a claim that Obama has been a dual citizen of the United States and Kenya since 1963, but provided no evidence beyond listing as its sources for the article the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Biography.com, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The article, which had no byline, printed verbatim from the IMDB profile for Obama the entry: "Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship." IMDB did not cite a source for its information -- which it listed under the heading "Trivia" -- but according to the U.S. Department of State, "Kenya does not officially recognize dual nationality."
The Biography.com entry for Obama did not address the dual-citizenship topic, and a search of the Journal-Constitution's content on the Nexis database (using the search terms "Obama!" and "Kenya!" for all possible dates) did not identify any articles in that newspaper addressing the topic.
The News did not indicate whether it contacted the Obama campaign or his Senate office to verify the claim that he holds dual U.S.-Kenyan citizenship.
Since the News posted the August 6 online article listing purported "facts" about the candidate -- a list that included Obama's accomplishments at Harvard Law School as well as his favorite movies -- the dual-citizenship claim has been repeated by conservative blogs such as Gateway Pundit and FreeRepublic, citing the News as the source of the information.
However, on its Kenya web page, the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs states: "Kenya does not officially recognize dual nationality." Moreover, Kenya's constitution explicitly prohibits dual citizenship and nullifies Kenyan citizenship of any 21-year-old who is also the citizen of another country and who has not formally renounced citizenship of that other country:
CHAPTER IV
CITIZENSHIP
[...]
97. (1) A person who, upon the attainment of the age of twenty-one years, is a citizen of Kenya and also a citizen of some other country other than Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who was born outside Kenya, made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.
(2)* A person who--
(a) has attained the age of twenty-one years before 12th December, 1963; and
(b) becomes a citizen of Kenya on that day by virtue of section 87; and (c) is immediately after that day also a citizen of some country other than Kenya, shall subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who is a citizen of Kenya by virtue of section 87 (2), made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.
(3) A citizen of Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be such a citizen if--
(a) having attained the age of twenty-one years, he acquires the citizenship of some country other than Kenya by voluntary act (other than marriage); or
(b) having attained the age of twenty-one years, he otherwise acquires the citizenship of some country other than Kenya and has not, by the specified date, renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as way be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.
--C.H.
I asked top editors to research the matter, correct it if it was wrong, and respond.
After some research, we determined that the only source we could find cited by one of our journalists who put the piece together was inadequate. We had no business citing the Internet Movie Database. But the journalist who orginated the item saw it as innocuous and it didn't raise flags for any editors before it was published online. (The item never appeared in print.)
We removed the item from our story, but we didn't place a correction on it - as is our policy - until late Tuesday afternoon, by which time the storm had picked up.
Here's a few examples of the types of e-mails we were receiving.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a miserable pack of blooming idiots. You reported that Barack Obama has dual citizenship? For you to do that anywhere in your published work, print or electronic, is about as stupid, moronic, careless, lazy, misleading, disorganized, unprofessional, confused, uninvolved, idiotic, dumb, indecent, disorderly, uncaring, cold, gossip-mongering, and just plain rotten as anything you could do, especially in an election year. Do you not care about your reputation? Do you not care that something like this, once started, never dies, and you have the unmitigated gall to bury your acknowledgement of your asinine reportage so deep in your e-version of the paper that one has to know about such a jack-ass failure of professional responsibility AHEAD OF TIME to even know what to look for !?!?!?!
FOR GOD'S SAKE, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR MISERABLE FAILURE OF JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS BELOW THE FOLD ON THE FRONT PAGE OF YOUR HARED COPY, APOLOGIZE, AND DO BETTER. Ya pack o' twits.
Another said:
How dare you print such blatant lies about Barack Obama. I presume you will make a correction so that all the dummies out there who believe any right-wing garbage they see or hear will at least see the truth - not that they will believe it now. This is despicable and you should be ashamed of yourselves. What kind of newspaper deals in phony political news?
Media Matters wrote its readers on Tuesday afternoon urging them to demand we publish a correction.
From: "Colorado Media Matters"
Date: August 12, 2008 5:39:46 PM MDT
To: michael@darlingco.com
Subject: Rocky Mountain News Scrubs the Record
Reply-To: action@mediamatters.org
Following an August 11 Colorado Media Matters item pointing out that the Rocky Mountain News inaccurately stated Sen. Barack Obama holds "both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship," the News deleted the sentence from its August 6 online article, but provided no indication on the page as of late afternoon on August 12 that it had done so. The News also provided no statement in its print edition or on its website explaining to readers how the original article was factually inaccurate.
Call the Rocky Mountain News to demand that editors take responsibility for publishing inaccurate information and that they inform their readers when content has been corrected, and why.
The News must take responsibility not only for dispensing false information but also for failing to inform readers of what the falsehood was. This is especially important given that since the News posted the article with the assertion about Obama, the dual-citizenship claim has been repeated by conservative blogs such as Gateway Pundit and FreeRepublic, citing the News as the source of the information.
The News has a journalistic responsibility to inform its readers of corrections to its content, and your voice is critical in holding the News accountable for its inaccuracies. Please take the time to call the News to demand that editors take responsibility for publishing inaccurate information and that they inform their readers when and why content has been corrected.
It published the email addresses and phone numbers to reach me and the Rocky's managing editor, as well as our mailing address, which by the way was incorrect. It had the wrong ZIP code.
Right around that time, we did post a correction. Not because of Media Matters but because it's our policy and practice and we hadn't done so in this case.
I sent e-mails to every person who contacted me, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50. Most were specific responses to their concerns. But in the end I resorted to a standard e-mail.
Here's what I said.
Thank you for your note. I appreciate your concern. The erroneous assertion about Sen. Obama's citizenship was in a story that never appeared in our print publication. It was in a story that was written for our Web site. That is why we haven't published a correction in the newspaper. We don't correct things in the newspaper that never appeared in the newspaper in the first place. We did remove the erroneous item from the story on the Web and published a correction at the top of the story. You can find that correction at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/06/things-you-might-not-know-about-barack-obama/
We have used this error to examine our processes at the Rocky Mountain News to prevent something similar from happening in the future and to improve the speed and transparency of our corrections process. It's important to learn from mistakes and that's what we're trying to do in this case. We regret the error.
I hope this response helps you better understand what happened and what we have done.
Best,
John Temple
Editor, president and publisher
Rocky Mountain News
I got a few nice responses back.
One said:
Thanks John,
I appreciate the response and the corrective actions taken.
The matter isn't behind us. It's helping us shape how we work on the Web. The story we created was meant as a resource for our readers. Such reference works should be totally reliable.
Some worry that editing standards are being weakened on the Web. It is a different challenge to edit when time pressures are so heavy. But our commitment is to accuracy, whether in print or online. And our policy is to put accuracy ahead of speed. In this case, speed wasn't the issue. The issue was we let down our guard and weren't skeptical enough. This was true from the person who created the story to the editors who oversaw it.
We're bound to make mistakes. I believe we often learn more from them than from our successes. It's critical that that be the case this time.
:
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1:22 PM
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the unfornate error, to which "Media Matters" so jumped on is no ordinary honest mistake. TO every mistake that there is at least 3 to 4 professed untruths against a conservative. So to every Obamanite out there..."get over it" and grow a pair. We the People, who cling to their guns and religion, have been getting 'raked over the coals'since Ted Turner injected his poison back in the eighties. The RMN did a correction/contration and that should be the end of it. Unlike some of the other outlets who knowingly print or voice a lie and never admit to it (i.e. NYT/ Dan Rather).So 'how do you like them apples' Mr and Ms Progessives?
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3:06 PM
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Would the Rocky Mountain News publish a list of some possibly not known items about John McCain?
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1:36 AM
Rigg writes:
Grace Griggs writes: "Would the Rocky Mountain News publish a list of some possibly not known items about John McCain?"
* You're kidding right? What ISN'T known about McCain?
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October 15, 2008
6:34 PM
Raul Clímaco writes:
Since Kenya does not recognise dual citizenship with any other country, a pre-existing Obama Kenyan citizenship (quite possible, e.g., by one or both of his parents' initiative) would have expired on his 21 birthday, without him committing any illegal act or omission. To reach 21 with two nationalities is obviously no crime in either the USA or Kenya, even if the person created the situation himself.
Even if Kenya (or Indonesia, etc.) did not explicitly exclude dual citizenship then, as far as the USA is concerned, a person who is a citizen of both countries is a citizen of the USA, and of the USA alone. Particularly, a qualified person seeking USA citizenship is not obligated to formally renounce his other nacionality/ies. They "do not exist". His oath of allegiance to the USA suffices.
The letter from the Dep of State appears to have been written by somebody in need of a long chat with his peers over at the DHS. The DOS actually has NO jurisdiction over citizenship matters.
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