NYT:"Hannity’s program on Sunday was notable in presenting partisan accusations against Mr. Obama in

[Pirate Smile]

a journalistic, documentary format in prime time."

Obama’s Personal Ties Are Subject of Program on Fox News Channel

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: October 6, 2008

During a weekend of Republican attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s personal associations, Fox News Channel ran a program Sunday that made provocative assertions about similar connections, called “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism.”
Sean Hannity, the conservative radio and television host, was the host of the hourlong program, which raised, among other things, unsubstantiated accusations that Mr. Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago was “training for a radical overthrow of the government.”

The statement came from Andy Martin, a conservative writer and frequent political candidate who is credited as being among the first — if not the first — to assert in a chain e-mail message that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim.
Mr. Obama is a Christian; his campaign says he “is not, was not and has never been” a Muslim.
Peppering his statements with phrases like “in my opinion” and “my view is,” Mr. Martin said Mr. Obama’s political career had been engineered by Bill Ayers, a founder and former member of the radical Weather Underground and now an education professor in Chicago.
Various reports, including ones in The New York Times, have found no evidence that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers were particularly close, although they have had various points of contact. Mr. Ayers was host of an event for Mr. Obama early in his political career, they served together on a charitable board, and both worked on an educational project financed by the billionaire philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg.

-snip-
Mr. Hannity said that Mr. Obama did not respond to a request for comment. Still, the program presented no opposing viewpoint to the program’s thesis: that, in Mr. Hannity’s words, “Obama’s list of friends reads like a history of radicalism.”
Mr. Hannity’s executive producer, John Finley, said that the program was clearly opinion and that the audience — on average 1.5 million to 2 million — knew to take it as such. “ ‘Hannity’s America’ is an opinion show — it’s a show from Sean’s perspective, which is obviously conservative,” Mr. Finley said.

Speaking of Mr. Martin, he added, “It’s one man’s opinion, one of many that was expressed on the show.”
Mr. Martin said he was careful not to present his theories about Mr. Obama as proven fact.
“That is my opinion — expert opinion — if you will,” Mr. Martin said of his commentary on Mr. Hannity’s program. “I don’t pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts.”

Mr. Martin came under strong attack from liberals on Monday. Many noted that the Republican Party of Florida decided against backing his bid for the State Senate in 1996 after receiving documents from his Congressional race 10 years earlier in Connecticut listing the purpose of one of his political committees as “to exterminate Jew power in America and to impeach the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/us/politics/07fox.html