Fascinating piece about two filmmakers who created a fake expert, policy institute, and accompanying Web site and YouTube clips -- and then duped a variety of respected news outlets into using the ruse as a credible source. Carefully written and sourced piece (it had better be!) seems to get to the bottom of it all.

In addition to being amusing, this story illustrates the danger of blogs and the 24-hour news cycle. As the Internet becomes a more respected source of reporting, it is more and more common for mainstream media to pick up a story, amplify it, and repeat it endlessly. It then acquires a life of its own and no number of disclaimers seem to squash it. I've personally seen several of these "facts" reported by established media outlets.

This article explicating a hoax comes one day after a spoof edition of the NYT was distributed in the Big Apple. Media didn't bite that rotten fruit. Sadly, respected media were all too willing to believe the hoax described here about McCain-Palin (including the tidbit that she didn't know Africa was a continent). The NYT reporter might have contacted an attorney to ascertain whether the hoaxsters were liable in inventing a policy analyst surname that just happened to be the real surname of a respected analyst. That may be actionable, not only against the hoaxsters but also against MSNBC, the New Republic, the LA Times and other likely suspects that assumed the blog posts and emails were true, without vetting their ... More »

Although this story is factually accurate, it is fatally unclear regarding the most important point to the story, leading to misunderstandings that have been repeated on NewsTrust by some of the other people who have reviewed the story. Specifically, the story does NOT state that "Martin Eisenstadt" tricked mainstream reporters into believing a fake story about Sarah Palin not knowing Africa was a continent. That story was reported originally by Carl Cameron of Fox News, based on an anonymous source who was NOT Michael Eisenstadt. The hoax perpetrated by Eisenstadt consisted of falsely pretending to be Cameron's anonymous source. As a result of the failure to make this distinction clear, the Times story is is being cited now as ... More »

The article does a decent but not a great job of explaining how this fraud happened. It also illustrates how easily duped the American press can be. It does not explain how with their resources, the NYT and other media companies were so easily mislead. As a result the story implies even the Times is unreliable as a source for accurate news.