Media Falls For Another Hoax

To an old journalist, like me, the story never did sound right – an unnamed McCain advisor alleging that Gov. Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent. You, no doubt, have heard the story. I suppose one could say the media was taken-in because of Ms. Palin’s apparent naive grasp of the world, including the location of Russia.

What struck me was that while the media repeated the story over and over, no one in the media seemed to dig into it to learn more, including to identify who was making such statements.

Well, it was all a hoax perpetrated on America’s shallow and gullible mainstream news media by a couple of bloggers. None of it was true. It was all a lie, and the media fell for it … again.

It’s all disclosed in The New York Times – two guys, Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin (right) created the elaborate hoax, including a fake policy institute – the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy – and a bogus Web site. The phony McCain adviser named Martin Eisenstadt, played by Gorlin, eventually showed up in YouTube videos. There is no Harding Institute. None of it was true.

This fake story made headliines and dominated cable news for days. As incompetent as it might seem, no one in the mainstream news media bothered to check the facts … or lack of them. It is another shocking indictment about the state of America’s news media today – news readers, pundits, interns, rumor mongers but no solid journalism … except for The Times.

The damage of such trickery and untruths is a further eroding of trust in the media, whether mainstream or online. It hurts the reputation of the world of blogging while exposing the shocking lack of standards and oversight in the mainstream media.

Of course, Gov. Palin has been on a national media blitz to deny that she ever had any confusion over whether Africa was a country or continent, a tactic that has only served to amplify the non-issue.

Filed Under: Featured • News Media

Tags: hoax on media • NY Times • Palin hoax