A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

New York Times by Richard Pérez Peña | Nov. 13, 2008 (News Report)
A Fake Expert and a Phony Think Tank Fool Bloggers and the Mainstream News Media

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. Full Story »

Posted by Chris Finnie - via Willie Bido (t)

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Michael Bugeja
4.3
 by Michael Bugeja - Nov. 13, 2008

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 too-weird-to-be-true claims.

I have researched media hoaxes for 20 years and have a chapter on some of the most successful in Living Ethics Across Media Platforms, explaining how to bust hoaxes. The Palin/Africa tidbit and its symbolism about President-Elect Obama's heritage is a prime example of what the online society will believe in a platform that will affirm any belief, however ridiculous.

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.”

The fake Eisenstadt’s first name, “Martin,” is close enough to the real Eisenstadt’s first name, “Michael,” to pursue defamation action, especially since the NYT reporter fact-checked this aspect of his story and found the authentic analyst who knew about the hoax. That suggests he was contacted. The NYT reporter is acting ethically in publishing his comments, holding other outlets to a high standard.

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