Fox Falls For Fake Story About Obama Personally Funding Muslim Museum During Shutdown
6 October 2013
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Fox Falls For Fake Story About Obama Personally Funding Muslim Museum During Shutdown
MIKE BURNS, media matters
Fox & Friends Saturday criticized President Obama for offering to personally pay for a “museum of Muslim culture” during the government shutdown, a claim that originated from a satire website.
On October 5, the co-hosts of Fox & Friends Saturday discussed the closure of the World War II Memorial, which resulted from the Republican-led shutdown. During the discussion, co-host Anna Kooiman claimed that while the memorial is closed, “President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture.”
KOOIMAN: The Republican National Committee is offering to pay for it to keep it open so that the veterans from Honor Flight are going to be able to go and see this because who did it honor? It honored them. It really doesn’t seem fair, especially — and we’re going to talk a little bit later in the show too about some things that are continuing to be funded. And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it’s the Republican National Committee who’s paying for this.
Unfortunately for Kooiman, the claim that Obama offered to pay out of pocket for a “museum of Muslim culture” originated from the satirical website the National Report. As the fact-checking site Snopes.com points out, a now-removed disclaimer on the National Report noted: “National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news.”
Fox has a history of passing off satirical stories as actual news.
UPDATE: On October 6, Kooiman issued the following statement via Twitter: “Just met w producers- I made a mistake yday after receiving flawed research abt a museum possibly closing. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”
Is this false?
Iran: Since 1979, the government has executed more than 4,000 people charged with homosexual acts. A non-adult who engages in consensual sodomy is subject to a punishment of 74 lashes.
Saudi Arabia: Although the maximum punishment for homosexuality is execution, the government tends to use other punishments – such as fines, prison sentences, and whipping – unless it feels that homosexuals have challenged state authority by engaging in social movements.
Sudan: For homosexual men, lashes are given for the first offence, with the death penalty following the third offence. 100 lashes are given to unmarried women who engage in homosexual acts.For lesbian women, stoning and thousands of lashes are the penalty for the first offence. Today, the issue has divided some religious communities. In 2006, Abraham Mayom Athiaan, a bishop in South Sudan, led a split from the Episcopal Church of Sudan for what he regarded as a failure by the church leadership to condemn homosexuality sufficiently strongly.
Yemen: Homosexuality is still illegal in Yemen in accordance to the country’s Shari’ah legal system. Punishment ranges from flogging to death.
Mauritania: The Shari’a law applies in Mauritania. The penal code states that, since 1983,any adult Muslim caught engaging in an ‘unnatural act’ with a member of the same sex is punishable with the death sentence by public stoning.
8 October 2013 at 8:45 am