Turns out this was a lie; a hoax. All the major news outlets picked this up without vetting it. Disgusting IMO. And this is why the press should not use this "anonymous source" nonsense, they just cannot be trusted.

November 13, 2008
A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
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.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.

(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)

They 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,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.

Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.

Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.

“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.

And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?

Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”



The New York Times > Log In

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"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

I said all along that I didn't believe that Africa thing...that is was made up or said out of spite. There is no way that someone with school age kids doesn't know that. Also, when you watch the interview with Palin where they ask her about this and she says its just ridiculous, you could tell that she was being honest. She said some goofy stuff, but this one was just too crazy to even believe.

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I'm the kind of woman when my feet hit the floor in each morning, the devil says "Oh crap, she's up."

Well yeah. . . what I think is important to note is how the press will just take something and run with it. They really can't be trusted anymore more.

I think opaldancing nailed it in the original thread.

http://www.mycoupons.com/boards/elec...lin-camps.html

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Carl Cameron works for Fox, right?

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Reading is Fundamental.

Yes he does. . .and David Shuster works for MSNBC. They're all guilty.

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"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

You could sense the tension between McCain and Palin so I believe there was some. I just wish she'd go back to Alaska and we wouldn't have to see or hear her again. She's pathetic.

She's like the teenager that didn't make the high school cheering squad, but keeps hanging about the gals that did, hoping people won't notice that she's a loser.

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Reading is Fundamental.

Pretty sure it was reported as a Fox story. Shuster had bad info about who leaked the story, which was retracted quickly.

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Reading is Fundamental.

Guilty of what?

Interesting FOX hasn't retracted the story. Have they? If not, it looks like the information is correct, it is the bogus source thing that was not correct and was retracted soon enough.

Guilty of not vetting their sources. Yes. . .Cameron is an idiot. Apparently the story was first reported by Newsweek and Cameron went with it. . .soon followed by everyone else.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Has anyone retracted the statements? Has Sen. McCain denied the veracity of the statements?

Why do you suppose FOX hasn't retracted the story?

Yes and yes. And apparently they have.

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"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

I've missed these places retracting the story itself -- only seen them retracting the name of the supposed source.

Can you link me to a retraction of the actual story?

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Reading is Fundamental.

I must have missed it. Please direct us to these story retractions. Of course, we know the name thrown out there is false, but I must have missed retraction of the story itself.

Doesn't sound like a denial to me ..............

From an interview with campaign manager Rick Davis On who was behind the leaks against Palin after the campaign: “Honestly, I have no idea. It’s the most juvenile thing I’ve ever seen. It’s inappropriate, uncalled for, and made me sad for our campaign.”

The Corner on National Review Online

I found this quote to be quite unsurprising - "As one McCain aide told me, "It's the difference between considering her someone who lacks knowledge and someone who is incompetent, and they [the communications aides] treated her as the latter."

This one didn't surprise me either "Some McCain loyalists think the Bushies assigned to Palin let her down and then turned on her. This is a representative quote from someone from McCain world holding that view: "Look, she wasn't ready for this, obviously. Their job was to make her ready for this and they failed. So they unloaded on her. If they had an iota of loyalty to John McCain, they wouldn't have done it."


Denial? Hardly ...................

The Aftrica country v. continent issue was actually addressed by one of Gov. Palin's own people.

"Longtime Palin staffer Meg Stapleton told ABC News' Kate Snow that Palin had fumbled over an Africa comment, but that it was a misspeak not worthy of the press coverage it received.

She explained that during a briefing session, someone asked Palin to explain the McCain-Palin stance on an issue, and as she was responding, "in the middle, she said 'country of Africa' and somebody instantly wrote it down and said, 'Oh, my God, she thinks it's a country.'"

But "she knows it's a continent," Stapleton said. "It was just a human mistake, just like Obama saying 57 states. I don't think anyone ever doubted that Obama knows there are 50 states."

ABC News: Martin Eisenstadt: Pundit or Fraud?

You can discuss the significance of 57 states v. the country of Africa, but the fact it happened is not up for debate.

So, if her own person is substantiating the Africa thing, I have no doubt the FOX news story is true in its entirety. Because, as we all know, FOX is fair and balanced