Insight on the News

For other uses, see Insight.

Insight

File:Insight on the News magazine logo.gif
Type	weekly online magazine
Format	magazine
Owner(s)	News World Communications and the Unification Church
Editor	Jeffrey T. Kuhner
Founded	1980s
Political alignment	conservative
Headquarters	3600 New York Avenue NE Washington DC 20002
Website	insightmag.com

Insight (formerly Insight on the News) is an American conservative Internet magazine now edited by Jeffrey T. Kuhner and owned by News World Communications, identified by Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church", which also owns United Press International and The Washington Times.

Background

Insight was founded in the 1980s as a print weekly called Insight on the News, and was known for its frequently discredited reports about alleged scandals in the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton. Originally, the magazine circulated midway in frequency between sister publications The Washington Times (a daily newspaper) and the monthly World&I magazine. Investigative journalist Robert Parry wrote about the rise of these publications:

"By the 1980s, the likes of South Korean theocrat Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch were pouring billions of dollars into a rapidly expanding right-wing media. From these investments came a plethora of well-financed think tanks, year-round attack groups, and a vertically integrated conservative news media – from books, magazines and newspapers to radio, TV and eventually the Internet. Right-wing activists flocked to Washington and New York for good-paying jobs as journalists and pundits."

In 2004, News World Communications discontinued publication of the print magazine and hired Jeffrey T. Kuhner to run Insight as a stand-alone website. Under Kuhner, Insight eschews bylines, in what Kuhner describes as an effort to "encourage contributions from reporters who do not want to reveal their names". About Insight's policy, Kuhner has said:

“Reporters in Washington know a whole lot of what is going on and feel themselves shackled and prevented from reporting what they know is going on. Insight is almost like an outlet, an escape valve where they can come out with this information.”

Notable events

David Brock

David Brock worked as a reporter for the print version of Insight during the late 1980s. After leaving Insight, Brock wrote "Blinded by the Right: Conscience of an Ex-Conservative", and now runs Media Matters for America, an organization that describes itself as "a web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Arlington National Cemetery

In 1997 Insight reported that the administration of President Bill Clinton gave political donors rights to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This charge was widely repeated on talk radio and other conservative outlets; but was later denied by the United States Army, which has charge over Arlington Cemetery.

Spurred on by the report, a subsequent flurry of media investigations turned up the burial of Larry Lawrence, a former United States Ambassador to Switzerland at Arlington, which in turn sparked a congressional investigation. Republican Party members of congress searched military records and found no evidence that Lawrence was ever in the Merchant Marine. As a result Lawrence's body was disinterred in 1997 at taxpayer expense and brought to California. Richard Holbrooke, an assistant secretary of state, had helped attain the rights to bury Lawrence at Arlington, and had written a letter to the White House praising Lawrence and saying that he deserved burial at the National Cemetery.

Paula Jones

In 1998 CNN reported that Insight "created a stir" when Paula Jones, who had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton, was the magazine's guest at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner where Clinton spoke.

CIA leak scandal

On February 5, 2004, Insight teamed up with News World's sister company United Press International to publish the first anonymously sourced reports from "Federal Law Enforcement officials" of "hard evidence" against Vice President Dick Cheney's staffers John Hannah and Lewis "Scooter" Libby as the guilty parties in "Plamegate". Hannah subsequently testified, and Libby was convicted. Questions about who the "Federal Law Enforcement officials" were, and what "hard evidence" might have existed at the time of the scoop have fueled wide speculation that Libby was chosen as a "fall guy" to take the rap for higher-ups in the Bush Administration, with speculation focused primarily on Cheney. Some journalists and bloggers commented that if a media outlet were needed to set up Libby for the fall, Insight would have been a logical first choice.

'Anonymous smear' controversy in 2008 Presidential Campaign

• See also: Madrasah § Negative_connotations_applied_to_the_word
• See also: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008 § Fabrications concerning Obama's religious background

On January 17, 2007, Insight published what would quickly come to be known among journalists and media experts as "the first anonymous smear" of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, and as a "double smear" on two of its candidates. The first sentence of the report asked the loaded question of whether the "American people were ready" for a candidate who was "educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?" The second sentence alleged "This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama." No basis was found for Insight's question and allegation, and throughout the ensuing controversy Insight steadfastly refused to present evidence or qualify it's sources..

Insight's report falsely labeled State Elementary School Menteng 01, an Indonesian public school which Obama attended as a child, as an Islamic "madrassa". Although the Arabic word "madrassa" refers to any kind of school, in post 9/11 United States political contexts it is primarily used to imply an association with anti-American extremism.

Soon after Insight's story, CNN reporter John Vause visited SDN Menteng 01 and found that each student received two hours of religious instruction per week in his or her own faith, and was told, "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion." Interviews by the Associated Press found that students of all faiths have been welcome there since before Obama's attendance.

After being mentioned by Fox News, Insight's story was quickly debunked by other news organizations and widely villified by journalists, including the Columbia Journalism Review. The article was immediately denounced by Senator Obama and described as "an obvious right-wing hit job on both candidates" by a spokesperson for Senator Clinton. Journalists condemned the Insight report as an anonymous "double smear" for its impact on both candidates.

A critical January 29 story in The New York Times said of Insight editor Jeffrey T. Kuhner that Kuhner still considered the article to be "solid as solid can be." Kuhner, however, declined to say whether even he himself knew the identity of his unnamed reporter’s sources. The Times commented "perhaps only that reporter knows the origin of the article’s anonymous quotes and assertions. Its assertions about Mr. Obama resemble rumors passed on without evidence in e-mail messages..."

The Columbia Journalism Review used the Insight example as "A lesson in how easy it is — even for publications with no history of credibility — to start a scandal." After quoting The New York Times recounting three other major Insight stories that have been discredited, the question was posed "after all this, why should we take seriously anything that this online rag has to say? Every news organization gets things wrong, but Insight seems to have developed a business model out of concocting fables."

Story repeated in major media outlets

• See also: Echo_chamber § As_a_media_metaphor echo

Despite the unproven status of the story's assertions, according to The New York Times "Hosts of morning television programs and an evening commentator on the Fox News Network nevertheless devoted extensive discussion to the Clinton-Obama article, as did Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts". This led to criticism of their journalistic practices. Fox later admitted to error in reporting "information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know."

SANE Project

In June of 2007, Insight reported on an undercover investigation of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, located in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., by the group Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). David Gaubatz, a spokesperson for the group, said:

“The ultimate goal for those at Dar Al-Hijrah is to instill Sharia law in the U.S. and have America adhere to the Islamic faith. They want America to be an Islamic state.”

Insight's story was denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In February 2007 SANE had released a policy paper stating that the objective of SANE is to banish Islam from the US by making "adherence to Islam" ("defined as any act, including any written or oral declaration, in support of Shari’a or in furtherance of the imposition of Shari’a within any territory of the United States of America.") punishable by 20 years in prison.

External links

• Official website

See also

• Echo Chamber