It looks like the liberal press corps is at it again—and this time they are showing they don’t know the ABC’s of journalism. It is obvious the journalists who have jumped into this controversy cannot read an article properly, let alone provide accurate, honest and thorough reporting. Furthermore, they lack courage and are not willing to investigate the Clintons: they prefer to simply pick on the mild-mannered Barack Obama instead.

The nonsense began when The Washington Post produced a front page story by Perry Bacon Jr. on Nov. 29, "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him." The story addressed the rumors which have been circulating regarding whether or not Obama is a Muslim. Following the publication of the piece, Politico.com exposed the dissension within The Washington Post among its editors who objected to the article. Many bloggers and the Obama campaign saw the article as feeding into the rumor that Obama is a Muslim rather than reporting this as false: the communications director of the Obama campaign called the story “egregious” for Obama is clearly a Christian. The Post’s assistant managing editor for politics, Bill Hamilton, apologized for the piece being “misunderstood” and for his editing. Others jumped into the fray attacking this as a horrible piece of reporting.

On Sunday, Washington Post Ombudswoman, Deborah Howell, attempted to quell the storm by also agreeing that Bacon’s Post piece was not a moment of glory for it cited the “discredited January 16 story in Insight” without pointing out that a CNN report had investigated the claims in the story and supposedly “debunked” them.

Over and over again, the editors and journalists who refer to our story are simply distorting what we reported in order to avoid hard work and embarrassing Hillary Clinton. Our story on January 16, as the title makes perfectly clear--and which reporters often deliberately avoid including--was “Hillary's team has questions about Obama's Muslim background.” The focus was Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama. For those in the press corps who have a great deal of difficulty in reading properly, we have to repeat the facts again, SLOWLY:

-Insight reported on January 16, 2007 that the Hillary campaign was conducting “opposition research” on her main rival, Barack Obama, with private investigators.

-Insight reported on January 16, 2007 that Senator Clinton’s camp was trying to find out the nature of Obama’s Muslim background, what kind of school he had attended in Jakarta, and whether he was concealing his Muslim heritage.

-Insight reported on January 16, 2007, that Senator Clinton’s team was going to use the Muslim charge to try to discredit Obama during the campaign.

-CNN produced a ridiculous reportage stating that Obama had attended a “secular school” and that they had therefore “debunked Insight’s story.” In reality, they only debunked a story they made up in their mind. Did they debunk that Hillary’s campaign was conducting opposition research on Obama’s religious past? No. And that was our story.

-Their illiterate comrades-in-arms at The New York Times wrote a piece against us that was plain idiotic: Reporter David Kirkpatrick’s article stated there was some doubt as to whether “Insight actually exists” even after he conducted several extensive phone interviews with the editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Kuhner. Not only do liberal reporters, such as Kirkpatrick, not know how to read, they can’t even hear properly. In his hit piece on Insight, Kirkpatrick did not investigate whether Hillary’s team was conducting opposition research into Obama—that would require real effort and talent.

-The Washington Post, as gullible as gullible can be, fell right into the little trap established by the Clintons. Politico.com reported that last week a series of e-mails had begun to trickle—evidently from the Clinton camp—about Obama’s Muslim background. Two campaign volunteers have been dismissed from Hillary’s campaign regarding those nasty e-mails. What splendid timing indeed. Obama is catching up to Hillary in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and her campaign doesn’t know what to do about it. Hence, the Hill-Billies are doing what we at Insight reported in January, 2007 that they would do during the campaign: try to discredit Obama by bringing up his past Muslim affiliations. The Washington Post seized on the rumors generated by the recent e-mails and gave the Clintons a nice helping hand with its front-page story about Obama and the Muslim rumors.

-Obama recently laid down the gauntlet to the Hillary camp when rumors began to circulate that they had information on him and were going to use it: he declared that if they have anything on him they can reveal it. And the Hill-Billies have—and it just isn’t working.

-For the record, Insight has published several Op-Eds which are favorable regarding Obama. He has a reputation as a man of integrity—even though we might disagree with some of his policy ideas and values. Nonetheless, he is not an individual who lacks a complete sense of honesty, shame and respect for the U.S. Constitution as does Hillary.

-Finally, everyone knows, on both the right and the left, that the Clintons have used private investigators against their opponents. R. Emmett Tyrrell and Dick Morris have repeatedly chronicled this pattern of behavior in their well-documented writings on the Clintons. This is the Clinton method. Who really believes that Hillary did not conduct “opposition research” into Obama’s past and is not behind this last-ditch effort to denigrate his campaign?

-Everyone now knows that Senator Clinton’s campaign did conduct research into Obama’s past and is looking for anything they can use—even being so ridiculous as to mention his writings in Indonesia while in kindergarten.

-Insight understands that when the liberal press corps attacks us it is because they have a long history of foolishness. After all, many of these individuals believed Bill when he said “I did not have sex with that woman.”

We at Insight demand a correction from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post for their repeated distortions or incomplete recital of our story. The focus in our story in January, 2007 was Hillary’s campaign strategy, not Obama. We were right in our January report about Hillary’s activities, the facts continue to prove us right that Hillary will do all she can to sabotage Obama, and we will ultimately be fully vindicated. Once again, the liberal media will have egg on its face.

If the liberal troika of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post want us to take their reporting seriously, they can start by doing some really hard-nosed journalism.

We at Insight understand that there are too many words in this article for the short attention span of some of the journalists at the liberal troika. But don’t worry; we will repeat all this again when they produce another really superficial report. They must keep trying: they will eventually learn how to read, write and report a story that isn’t a mere sucking up to their Democratic candidate du jour.

-Washington Watch is a regular column published in Insight on the News.