Posted on 11/14/2008 7:09:29 AM PST by outfield
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They don’t really care.
CHECK YOUR FRIGGIN’ SOURCES, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD! JOURNALISM 101! “The INTERNET” IS NOT A SOURCE................
Geniuses, sheer geniuses...........
There were so many false stories out there...I’m still waiting for the retraction of the whole “Trig was Bristol’s” baby scandal.
This was exposed on FR as a fraud minutes after its publication. Just one more piece of evidence that the MSM is a dinosaur.
We all keep assuming that as they say, some “anonymous” McCain staffer is the source. Why believe that, given the “in the tank for zerO” ??
IMHO it is much more likely that the source of the “rumor” is the fertile (as in pile of BS) imagination of the reporter.
When a reporter, especially one from the MSM, quotes “unnamed sources” I immediately put what his or her new “news item” in my “credibility quarantine” file !
They want to believe!
“... ‘Trig Was Bristol’s’ baby ...” and, don’t forget, still fathered by Todd. I’m no longer surprised at the depths to which the MSM will plunge to go after someone it opposes.
Wanna bet a donut they were zero supporters?????????
A freshman journalism student wouldn’t make that kind of mistake............How MSNBC could call themselves journalists with this kind of shoddy reporting. But with Shustermatthewsolberman, it’s not surprising at all..............
And clearly, they voted no on Proposition 8.
If they were, why would they spread such a provable hoax to the MSM lickspittle supporters of The Zero? What they did was to really expose them for what they are, faux journalists, fawning sycophants and media shills.............
Partner = Homosexual
What passes for “journalism” today; a phony journalist from a phony news source quotes a phony source about a phony story.
More than that. They want to destroy Sarah Palin at any cost.
Two things. They say they recognized their error within “minutes” and retracted on the air. I don’t believe that; no one mentioned it at the time.
Second, they say that just because this source was a fake doesn’t mean that she didn’t actually say that Africa is a country. Although they do not cite any other sources for the story.
Good grief. Some retraction. They are natural born liars.
What?
This sounds a lot like "fake but accurate".
This is what we're up against. They got double duty out of this hoax. They got to slam Palin as supposedly ignorant, and there have been a host of stories run with that meme, from which they launch into the related meme of GOP as the party of ignorance.
And they get to claim that McCain people are behind the slander, driving a wedge between Republicans themselves as they alternately agree, disagree, attack McCain, defend Palin. They tried to get Palin to attack McCain in self-defense and to her credit she wouldn't do it. But they did a lot of mischief with this fake story which opened up wounds among Repubs who fell for it.
And while we've tended to give Fox a pass as being somehow better than the rest, the fact is that Fox is very little better than the worst of them. When you tune in TV news, you are tuning into DNC Central. When you open the morning paper, you're reading a DNC broadsheet. It has a little news in it as filler, and the challenge to you is to figure out which is news and which is propaganda. The propaganda-to-news ratio is worse than even we think.
Their only regret is, they were caught in a lie!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.