Insight (magazine)

Insight
Type	weekly online magazine
Format	magazine
Owner	News World Communications
Editor	Jeffrey T. Kuhner
Founded	1980s
Political allegiance	conservative
Headquarters	3600 New York Avenue NE Washington DC 20002
Website: insightmag.com

Insight (formerly Insight on the News) is an American politically-conservative Internet magazine now edited by Jeffrey T. Kuhner.

Contents 1 Background 2 Print magazine controversies 2.1 David Brock 2.2 Arlington National Cemetery 3 Internet magazine controversies 3.1 Barack Obama 3.2 SANE Project 4 References 5 External links

Background

Insight was founded in the 1980s as a print weekly called Insight on the News, and was known for its reports about alleged scandals in the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton.^[1] Originally, the magazine circulated midway in frequency between sister publications The Washington Times (a daily newspaper) and the monthly World&I magazine. All three periodicals are part of parent company News World Communications, a media company owned by the Unification Church. In 2004, News World Communications closed the print magazine and hired Jeffrey T. Kuhner to run it as a stand-alone website. Under Kuhner, Insight eschews bylines in an effort to encourage contributions from higher-profile reporters who do not want to reveal their names. About Insight's contributors, Kuhner has said:^[2][3]

“Reporters in Washington know a whole lot of what is going on and feel themselves shackled and prevented from reporting what they know is going on. Insight is almost like an outlet, an escape valve where they can come out with this information.”

Print magazine controversies

David Brock

David Brock worked as a reporter for the print version of Insight during the late 1980s. Brock later left conservatism and now runs Media Matters for America, an organization that describes itself as "a web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."^[4]

Arlington National Cemetery

In 1997 Insight reported that the administration of President Bill Clinton gave political donors rights to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This charge was widely repeated on talk radio and other conservative outlets; but was later denied by the United States Army, which has charge over Arlington Cemetery. Clinton had, however, presided over the Arlington burial of Larry Lawrence, a former United States Ambassador to Switzerland. After congressional investigators searched military records and found no evidence that Lawrence was ever in the Merchant Marine, Lawrence's body was disinterred in 1997 and brought to California. Richard Holbrooke, an assistant secretary of state, had helped attain the rights to bury Lawrence at Arlington, and had written a letter to the White House praising Lawrence and saying that he deserved burial at the National Cemetery.^[5][6][7][8]

Internet magazine controversies

Barack Obama

See also: Barack Obama background whisper campaign and media controversy

In January 2007, Insight published an anonymously written and sourced article saying that opposition research by presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign team discovered that rival candidate Senator Barack Obama had concealed that he was educated in a Islamic madrassa school during his youth in Indonesia, and that his opponents within the Democratic Party were seeking to use the findings to hurt Obama's campaign.^[9][10]. Material gleaned from Insight's report appeared in Fox News Channel television broadcasts, and elsewhere.^[11] Soon after, CNN reporter John Vause visited the school and found its staff in Western attire, its student body apparently consisting of Muslims, "Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian(s)".^[12] The CNN story also quoted a spokesperson for Clinton, who dismissed the allegation as "an obvious right-wing hit job" on both candidates. Insight responded that, "To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting", and said that "Although we are not able to send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story, we harness our resources for what we do best—providing our readers with political intelligence."^[13]. A January 29 story in The New York Times quoted Insight editor Jeffrey T. Kuhner as saying he considered the article is "solid as solid can be", but said of Kuhner:

Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters.^[14].

On January 31 Kuhner responded to the New York Times story, saying in part:

The Times is trying to obscure the real issue: Hillary Clinton's campaign had been conducting extensive opposition research on her main '08 Democratic rival, and they were zeroing in on his Muslim background. This is the truth. This is exactly what we actually reported. This is what actually happened. We got it first and we got it right. No amount of spinning and mud-slinging from the liberal media can change this.^[15]

SANE Project

In June of 2007, Insight reported on an undercover investigation of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, located in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., by the group Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). David Gaubatz, a spokesperson for the group, said:^[16]

“The ultimate goal for those at Dar Al-Hijrah is to instill Sharia law in the U.S. and have America adhere to the Islamic faith. They want America to be an Islamic state.”

Insight's story was denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).^[17] In February 2007 SANE had released a policy paper stating that the objective of SANE is to banish Islam from the US by making "adherence to Islam" ("defined as any act, including any written or oral declaration, in support of Shari’a or in furtherance of the imposition of Shari’a within any territory of the United States of America.") punishable by 20 years in prison.^[18]

References

External links

• Official website