Back in January 2007, Fox & Friends ran with the false online story that Barack Obama was raised as a Muslim and attended a madrassa as a child in Indonesia.

This prompted then-Fox News executive John Moody to reportedly state that the Fox News hosts who ran with the story “violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about. ... They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn't know.” Moody also wrote in a memo to staff regarding the madrassa story: “For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC.”

The Fox & Friends hosts have clearly learned nothing from that stunningly irresponsible incident.

As Media Matters noted earlier, Fox & Friends this morning hosted Newsmax columnist John LeBoutillier to peddle his new self-published book, The Obama Identity: A Novel (Or Is It?), which LeBoutillier described as a story about CIA operatives traveling the world discovering secrets about Obama. LeBoutillier said that his book is “fiction” but includes “so much real stuff.”

Either the Fox & Friends crew didn't do its homework on LeBoutillier and his book, or they simply just didn't care. During the segment, LeBoutillier promoted the birther conspiracy claim that Obama's step-grandmother has said that Obama was born in Kenya and cited the claim as an example of the “real stuff in this book.” Of course, this claim has been debunked, and the Fox & Friends hosts provided absolutely no pushback against it.

Fox & Friends provided airtime for a guest to peddle his self-published, birther-tinged book, then offered zero pushback when he promoted a debunked online theory that Obama was born in Kenya. It's obvious that the hosts have learned nothing from their irresponsible madrassa reporting.