Birthers vs. Truthers: The New York Times' Double Standard on Conspiracy Theories

Real estate mogul Donald Trump, acting like a presidential candidate, is garnering attention by latching on to the "birther" issue - the discredited notion that President Obama was not born in Hawaii but in another country, thus making him ineligible for the presidency. The New York Times ran a poll April 22 that asked: "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States, or was he born in another country?" The Times then broke down the results out for Republicans (but not for independents or Democrats): 45% of Republicans answered Obama was born elsewhere, 33% said he was born in the United States.


Liberal columnist Charles Blow pounced on Saturday: "It further exacerbates a corrosive culture on the right that now celebrates the Cult of Idiocy - from Glenn Beck to Michele Bachmann - where riling liberals is more valuable than reason and logic, and where intellectualism and even basic learnedness are viewed with suspicion and contempt."

A recent Room for Debate online roundtable, "The Psychology of the 'Birther' Myth," hosted seven experts about the psychology of the myth, none of whom argued in favor of it. The introduction:






Students: Tell us what you think about the "birther" movement. Why do you think so many people believe that President Obama was not born in the United States despite factual evidence that he was? With which of the seven experts polled in the Room for Debate post do you most agree? For instance, do you think the root of this belief is "racial resentment"? The popularity of conspiracy theories in general and the way they are spread by modern media? Or is it because of the "increasingly disconnected ideological echo chambers" that have polarized us as a society?

Yet compare the Times' current contempt for birthers to reporter Alan Feuer's notoriously positive June 5, 2006 profile of a far more pernicious anti-Republican conspiracy theory believed by many Democrats: That the Bush administration either knew or actually instigated the 9-11 attacks that killed over 3,000 Americans. The text box said of the conference: "Some participants see an American tradition of questioning concentrated power."







A Nexis search suggests the paper has only referenced the Ohio University findings twice in news stories, both times in a single paragraph, neither of which singled out Democrats orBush-haters as the chief advocates.
