David Broder Doesn't Listen To Deborah Howell Or Howard Kurtz
January 23, 2008 -- 12:36 PM EST // //

In his column today on Barack Obama, David Broder writes the following about the various smear rumors making the rounds about Obama:

While he was on his defensive spiel, Obama also urged people to ignore "crazy" rumors that he was Muslim, not Christian, or ever failed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or take his oath to uphold the Constitution.

Funny, I thought I remembered that there was a whole big dust-up over at WaPo over this whole practice of writing about rumors without declaring them false. I dimly recall that both WaPo Ombud Deborah Howell and media critic Howard Kurtz gently suggested that writers at the paper should stop merely leaving it to Obama to deny these rumors and should instead call them out as false themselves.

Maybe Broder missed that whole flap. Or maybe I'm just mis-remembering or something. Oh, well. We soldier on.

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