Posted on 11/12/2008 8:40:24 PM PST by SmithL
NEW YORK, (AP) -- MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.
David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.
Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.
"The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air," said Jeremy Gaines, network spokesman. "We recognized the error almost immediately and ran a correction on air within minutes."
Gaines told the Times that someone in the network's newsroom had presumed the information solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Great, Thanks!!!
Here’s the website of the guys that made up this story - the Yes Men. http://www.theyesmen.org/ Maybe they just deserve Purgatory - they are equal opportunity satirists.
Just heard one of them, “Wilfred Sassoon”, interviewed on the BBC this AM about the fake NYT they passed out yesterday that announced that the Iraq War was over. An entire paper of fake news!
The report of the hoax was posted on DummyUnderground. Only four dispirited people responded to it. I sure they must have had the original false post, and the Dummies undoubtedly had a lot of fun with it. Now they've been duped too. Well, they are mostly fools and suckers.
Why don’t we blame Axelrod....?
so does the Obama campaign,...ie....Axelrod....
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Which brings us to something else the two men share: David Axelrod, the 51-year-old reporter turned media consultant who was the key media strategist for both men's campaigns. He's the one who wrote those ads, framed that shot and came up with the "Yes We Can" tag line. "I don't bring these messages to candidates," Axelrod says when I point out the similarities. "I look for candidates who exemplify and reflect those messages." In the cases of Obama and Patrick, he says, the work is a collaboration. "They take and improve on what you bring them; they deliver it well because they believe in it. It's like riffing with great musicians."
Even though he lives 1,000 miles from the notoriously clubby world of political consulting, Axelrod has become one of its most successful and respected practitioners. Mark McKinnon, who produced George W. Bush's ads in the last cycle and now works for John McCain, calls Axelrod "the best media guy out there who doesn't have a ring." With his quick wit and knack for soundbites ("The Icon gets hoisted," Axelrod said of the media's treatment of star candidates, "and then it becomes a piñata"), the onetime Chicago Tribune political writer is a favorite of reporters seeking quotes. Charming as he can be with journalists, those who have worked with him say, he can be "aggressive" and "extremely difficult" in the trenches of a campaign. Colleagues point out that he's uncommonly idealistic for someone in his line of work, though a veteran Chicago reporter noted that this has its limits: "He's a principled guy, but he's not a philanthropist. The candidates he's worked for have been well funded, and he's made very good money doing what he does."
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This fluffs his image....but he has a dark side....a Marxists side.......
Have stopped watching FOX due to this. Hope others will too. :)
Do these fools believe EVERYTHING that shows up in e-mails?
Lol, you’ve been busy I see! Picked a good font. If you had done it earlier you could have used Halloween orange.
LOL! One of our favorite movies!
If Romney disavows it, fine.
If not he approves.
Romney is running for president, and has been since he “suspended” his campaign.
Palin is too conservative for Romney and the GOP, she has to be destroyed.
He has the ability to buy the election as B. Hussein did, only in Romney's case he can do it with his own money.
BO had to rely on fraud and illegal donations to do it.
I stopped watching Fox (and the other fake news outlets) election night. FR is the news. And so much more.
I don't believe the story came out until after the election, along with the bathrobe story, which, in subsequent stories shrank to one or two wash cloths. ;o)
I don’t care if Cameron apologizes, comes clean or whatever.
His animated glee when he was reporting that ‘story’ was disgusting! He was alive with excitement thinking he had the ‘inside’ scoop on Palin. “News” that was sure to be damaging.
He is now on my @#$% list.
.
I’ll probably do a beige version too
[I’ll probably do a beige version too]
ECRU? Tan, sand. At least I haven’t dreamed of it - yet, lol.
The zoom is always eye catching.
.
Zoomers are good
Time to move forward and quit rehashing things with endless repetitive text and whining that will not CHANGE anything
Been a long zoom since 2004 too!!
This lot would be really very funny, except for the fact that they do it so well that people actually believe their satire AND form opinions based upon it - witness Sarah Palin - that little quip will hang round her head for the rest of her life.
Think about it. It works as a satire because it plays on an existing prejudice - i.e. that anyone outside the thriving metropolises of Washington, LA, NY and SF is some kind of uncivilised, ignorant hick whose knuckles drag along the ground. That is a stereotype and its untrue. BUT, such is the speed and reach of modern communiction the very assertion of this slur actually reinforces the stereotype itself!
I dont agree with the purgatory allusion. If they have influenced an election for the most powerful posts in the world, by fabrication of a lie that they put into someone else’s mouth, then as far as I am concerned that is tantamount to perversion of the democratic process - and that diminishes all of us.
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