When it’s not in fact Rumors. Rumors would be started and spread through grass roots.
What IS the case is a Republican-Ku Klux Klan joint action of Disinformation with deliberate lies spread as though they were actual facts, through such Well-Respected Journalistic Engines as FOX Noise Nutwerx and the Globe, a “newspaper” that makes the National Enquirer look like a serious News Outlet. The sources were all paid operatives of both the Republican Party and a Klan organization called StormFront.
And the word of a so-called Forgery expert named Jerome Corsi. Who according to one spin of his story learned the art of Forgery by forging documents for the CIA and Military.
The AP’s own “rumor control” starts with a blazing huge headline “Obama a secret muslim, not a citizen…” in large type and then in smaller type “believed by many in mainstream even without evidence”.

So, what, people who read only the headline aren’t going to think that AP officially endorses the “rumors”? Does the writing and editorial staff at AP, supposedly experts in mass communications, believe that people not accustomed to reading past the headline will actually NOT think that AP OFFICIALLY endorses the Disinformation Campaign?