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Mediamatters.Org - The July 3 edition of The Note,
ABCNews.com's daily political newsletter, quoted Chicago Tribune reporter Frank James
writing of Sen. John McCain's recent trip to Colombia: "If
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe were going to help one of the presidential
candidates, it would likely be McCain more than Sen. Barack Obama since the
all-but-official Republican presidential nominee supports the U.S.-Colombia
Free Trade Agreement while Sen. Barack Obama doesn't." Immediately after
quoting James, ABC added: "(And the RNC may want you to remember that it
was Obama's name -- not McCain's -- that popped up on a seized FARC laptop.)"
ABC offered no explanation for its reference -- in a compilation of reports about the release of the Colombian hostages and McCain's trip to Colombia -- to a report that
Obama's name "popped up" in a computer seized from
"FARC," the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Indeed, the Associated Press article ABC linked to simply reports that a letter
written by FARC's spokesman said that unnamed "gringos"
working with Ecuador's government "say the new president will be
(Barack Obama)" and that Obama "rejects both the Bush
administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current
military aid program." As Media
Matters for America has noted, neither the AP article nor the
reported letter itself indicates any relationship between Obama and FARC.
Several right-wing groups and media
outlets have used the letter to falsely allege "contacts" and other connections between FARC and
Obama. A March 7 Investor's Business
daily editorial claimed that
"FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama's campaign," and that
the letter "signals a disturbing pattern of contacts with rogue
actors." A March 6 entry on Corruption
Chronicles, "A Judicial Watch
Blog," falsely claimed an "electronic mail[]"from FARC said that
"associates of FARC were scheduling a sit down with" Sen. Barack
Obama "to lobby him." Radio host Rush Limbaugh later read the Corruption
Chronicles entry aloud on the March 12 broadcast of his nationally syndicated
radio program.
The text of the purported letter,
reprinted by El País (Spain),
does not identify the "gringos" to whom the FARC spokesman, the
reported author of the letter, referred. Translated to English, the relevant
portion of the letter reads:
The
gringos will ask for an appointment with the minister to request that he
communicate to us his interest in discussing these topics. They say that the
new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in
your compatriots. Obama will not support Plan Colombia nor sign the TLC. We
responded that we are interested in relations with all governments on equal
terms, and that in the case of the United States this requires a
public pronouncement expressing their interest in talking with FARC, given
their continual war with us.
From the July 3 edition of The Note:
"McCain
spends 24 hours on Colombia
soil, hostages are rescued. (It sounds almost like a Chuck Norris Interweb fact
...)" per ABC's Karen Travers and Gregory
Wallace.
One
theory: "If Colombia's
President Alvaro Uribe were going to help one of the presidential candidates, it
would likely be McCain more than Sen, Barack Obama since the all-but-official
Republican presidential nominee supports the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
while Sen. Barack Obama doesn't," Frank James writes for the Chicago
Tribune.
(And
the RNC may want you to remember that it was Obama's name -- not McCain's --
that popped up on a seized FARC laptop.)
Media Matters - Echoing right-wing smears, ABC's The Note falsely suggested a link between Obama and Colombian rebels {...} ABCNews.com's The Note, after linking to reports on Sen. John McCain's recent trip to Colombia, stated: "(And the RNC may want you to remember that it was Obama's name -- not McCain's -- that popped up on a seized FARC laptop.)" ABC offered no explanation for its reference to a report that Obama's name "popped up" in a computer seized from "FARC," the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Several right-wing groups and media outlets have used a letter from a FARC spokesman that reportedly mentioned Obama to falsely allege "contacts" and other connections between FARC and Obama. {...} Published: July 4, 2008, 12:26 am - Indexed: July 4, 2008, 6:23 pm - Page Size: 19KB |