There’s nothing like a mass forwarded email to whip up an all out frenzy over a slew of one sided misinformation.
These usually begin with some kind of urgent plea to forward to as many people as possible, because the secret information contained is a shocking revelation that needs to be revealed.
Since 2008, President Obama has become a favorite target among chain emailers. A couple years ago, one such gem went out about a special Fox News report.
The writer billed the piece as a “very important documentary” that would “open your eyes to how YOUR country is being sold down the road to totalitarian socialism.”
This email made its rounds and built up hype for the special. The problem: no such show was scheduled to air. In the end, those expecting to witness a chilling expose on the secret Marxist-inspired political career of President Obama were left wondering what happened.
The Hannity's America Special
Well, in 2008, Hannity’s America was running a special called Obama & Friends: History of Radicalism. This program drudged up the President’s former associates and raised completely unsubstantiated accusations that Obama was "training for a radical overthrow of the government."
That claim came from conservative writer Andy Martin, a man with a penchant for distributing, you guessed it -- chain emails. Among this guy’s famous unsubstantiated emails was one of the first Obama-related email chains that spread the false rumor Obama is secretly a Muslim.
It turns out the email promoting a "shocking new expose" on Obama was simply the recirculation of outdated material. According to Snopes.com, someone must have stumbled across information advertising the 2008 show, and mistook it for an upcoming segment.
The writer also added: "the report will go back to Obama’s earlier days showing his close ties to Marxist professors, friends and spiritual advisers."
Fox itself eventually had to put the rumors to bed, saying it had no plans to run such a new expose, or that there were any plans to rerun the Hannity special.
Ben Norris is a freelance writer and independent journalist from Phoenix, Arizona. He is an Arizona Press Club scholar, human rights advocate. BenjaminJames has 84 post(s) at Top Secret Writers
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