The story of Obama releasing his long form birth certificate has made the rounds worldwide, including on the
Ten Morning News in Australia. Here's a
video of a report by Natasha Exelby via YouTube; shortly after the 25-second mark Exelby said: "Hillary Clinton was one of the first people to raise concerns about this back in 2008 during the primaries before Barack Obama was actually the Democrats' political nominee; he put that to bed by releasing a short-form certificate..."
I said to myself "Huh?" after that remark. So I did a search and found this
Telegraph (UK) article from today "
Birther row began with Hillary Clinton"...another misleading headline, the subtitle of the article says: "The lie that Barack Obama was not born in the US has been fuelled by fringe Republicans — but supporters of Hillary Clinton, now Mr Obama’s Secretary of State, are largely to blame for starting it." Again...SUPPORTERS, not the candidate herself. Further in the article: "An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama’s main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii." Also, a pro-Clinton lawyer named Philip J. Berg filed the first birther lawsuit.
How dare media make false accusations against a high-ranking state diplomat like that. Millions of Australians who don't normally follow American politics now have the impression that our secretary of state initiated smears against the current president. (But then again, the founder of Fox News is Australian...)
So this is my comment to the
Ten Morning News video: "Not Clinton herself (Clinton is now the sec. of state in the US) but rather an anonymous email from a Clinton SUPPORTER; then another supporter who was a lawyer sued for the release of the certificate. Please correct this; it's disgraceful to smear a DIPLOMAT like that. Thank you, an American viewer."
Channel Ten in Australia is known for its original programming such as the long-running soap opera
Neighbours and cooking show
MasterChef Australia. Much of its primetime consists of American imports including CBS and Fox productions such as
Glee and
Modern Family and even
The Early Show and David Letterman. Its "
Early News Bulletin" for Thursday included a CBS News report about the birth cert.