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 »

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3.7

by Sheldon Rampton - Nov. 13, 2008

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 a source for people who claim that "Palin deserves an apology."