An April 26 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas pushes the right-wing meme that President Obama “did not put out a formal proclamation for Easter–after putting out proclamations for Muslim holidays.” But Lucas apparently doesn’t know the difference between a presidential statement and a presidential proclamation.
Lucas writes that “the White House released proclamations on Muslim holidays Ramadan, Eid-al-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-al-Adha.” That’s false: the White House issued informal statements or messages — not proclamations — on those holidays.
Lucas does not report that, as Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson documented, no president since at least 1980 issued an Easter proclamation — something you’d think would be germane to the discussion.
A formal presidential proclamation is something quite different from an informal statement or message. Lucas’ false conflation of the two demonstrates that either he doesn’t understand the difference or is deliberately obscuring the difference to further his right-wing hackery. Either way, he’s not practicing what most would recognize as journalism.