Posted on 11/13/2008 6:53:31 AM PST by Vendek
It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.
Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.
And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
Read More
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"They (the perpetrators) say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.
“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find..."
Doubly disgraceful.
Verrrry Interesting! But stooopid! ... LOL...
I wonder how much *exposure* this HOAX is going to get. It’s good that we have the *information* now — that it was a hoax. This should be pulled out and recited whenever someone uses “anonymous sources” for their destructive articles...
For real? Carl Cameron should be fired on the spot. My gosh, I can do a better job than he did.
Apparently, “Eisenstadt” claimed credit for the statement about Africa.... but was not the source of the alleged leak to begin with. In other words, “Eisenstadt” took credit for the leak, but wasn't. Wait, stop, now I'm confused.
And, wow, did people around here take the bait, hook, line and sinker!
It is going to be hard to get this genie back into the bottle.
I love the internet, but the speed at which it has led us to expect news makes damaging rumors and hoaxes more likely to air. And, once aired, are awfully hard to correct after-the-fact.
NYT catches up finally. We knew about this days ago.
Obama was right, Change is good.
(OK, I'm still watching F&F in the morning)
Notice, it is in the interests of the NYT to have the internet discredited.
Obama (video): "I've been in 57 states... I think one left to go"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrsBKGpwi58
It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer ...
JMO, but one person making a false claim as being a source doesn't dispose of the matter of other sources. This guy pops up and says "I'm Spartacus," and we're supposed to believe he is?
Has Cameron said that his "unnamed source" was Eisenstadt? Nope. He's going to be content with the knowledge that most people will leap to that conclusion.
Wait... What?
I will always remember a Human Events headline from 30 years ago. “Liberals always fooled by charlatans.” How true. In that case they were talking about Mrs. Carter and other politicians who were suckered in to believing Jim Jones was a good guy!
Nowadays we see how easily they are fooled. I guess the outlets who believed this story are the same ones who fell for that hoax many years ago saying GWB had a low IQ because some non existent “institute” said they had done a study. Many in the media ate that up but then failed to point out it turned out to be totally made up.
There are two stories going now, and the facts don't support merging the two stories.
One story is that a McCain camp source spoke off the record regarding his/her impression of Palin's knowledge, etc. The other story is that Eisentadt steps up and claims to have been that source.
It's an error in logic to leap to the conclusion that Eisentadt is the source of Cameron's report. If Eisenstadt is Cameron's source, then Cameron should be admitting that his anonymous source was Eisenstadt.
Cameron and O'Reilly stepped in it bigtime. Oh the perils in dealing in gossip from anonymous sources.
I am 100% sure Palin knows Africa is a continent. So I deduce that Carl's sources, whomever they may be, were passing on the same gossip which turns out to have been based on a hoax.
***Notice, it is in the interests of the NYT to have the internet discredited.***
Yep, they once again got caught with sloppy research, so they blame it on the bloggers. Hmmmm...let me think...wasn’t there some guy on CBS a couple of years ago who said that people sitting around in their pajamas with a lap top could NOT possibly do the research that CBS could do? He proved to be wrong. And he, Dan Rathers, lost his big job on CBS because the bloggers including our own Buckhead and someone at LIttle Green Apples proved the documents Rather was pushing were phoney.
What they rush into is anything that supports their central thesis, in this case, Sarah Palen is stupid.
Funny how this story was bypassed completely! And the statement was something like “I’ve been in 57 states... I think one left to go, Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go”
Yeah, media ignored that one!
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