But he "recently found myself scratching my head" over a "Pan American Health Organization press release that 'the new virus, which emerged in Mexico and the United States in April,' has spread to 74 countries." Follow-up questions put to one of the organization's spokespeople brought the reply that "it's not clear that this pandemic started in Mexico.... We may never know in which country it started."

But none of this stopped the usual crowd of hyperventilating anti-immigration--or rather, anti-Hispanic immigration--radio and cable television hotheads from pointing at Mexico as the unequivocal origin of the disease.

According to the Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group, conservative-nationalist radio talk show host Michael Savage said on April 24, "Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico."

In another example of irresponsible journalism cited by the watchdog group, Fox's contributor Michelle Malkin wrote in her blog on April 25, "Hey, maybe we'll finally get serious about borders now." She added, "I've blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration."

On April 27, CNN's Lou Dobbs started his nightly show saying, "We begin with dire new warnings about the worsening outbreak of swine flu. This outbreak is spreading from Mexico to the United States and around the world."

Indeed, Oppenheimer gives us the charming fact that "some radio and cable-television presenters called it the 'Mexican flu.'"

The Herald reporter doesn't claim to "have an answer for how this story should have been reported early on," but he posits that, "just as scientists are looking into the history of the H1N1 outbreak to learn how to better handle future pandemics, we in the media should look at how to handle these kinds of stories more responsibly in the future"--and, crucially, "expose reckless charlatans for what they are."

Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Bart Laws on Swine Flu" (5/8/09).

Unfortunately, as a new report by FAIR documents, the media's complicity in smearing an entire religious group goes far beyond the role of the 70 newspapers that participated in the distribution of the Obsession DVD.

FAIR’s report, “Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation,” profiles 12 top anti-Muslim pundits who regularly use misinformation and innuendo to broadcast hate against Muslims. From talk radio host Michael Savage openly advocating killing 100 million Muslims to CNN's Glenn Beck stating that Muslims “will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West” within 10 years, the report unmasks the pundits who have done the most to spread anti-Muslim fear and bigotry in the media.

Other members of the report's "dirty dozen" list include talkshow hosts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; activists like Michelle Malkin, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz; and influential writers like Mark Steyn and Robert Spencer.

Notably, some of the leading members of this network have gone well beyond outrageous statements. From Pipes' campaign against the principal of an Arabic-language public school in New York City, whom he erroneously painted as an extremist, to Malkin's crusade against a Dunkin Donuts ad featuring a scarf that Malkin dubbed a “symbol of the murderous Palestinian jihad,” the leading Islamophobic pundits have also translated their hateful message into action.

The full report is available for download at www.smearcasting.com.