HAHA, MSNBC "victim of a hoax" about source of Palin Africa story

[One Sweet World]

Mabye I'm late to the game on this one, but did you guys see the story about blowhard David Shuster being duped about the Palin Africa story. From Yahoo:

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

Nice one.

[brooklynite]

1. What's interesting is not that the news networks got hoaxed...

but that so many McCain/Palin staffers thought it was a reasonable story and weren't willing to immediately rebut it.

[Schema Thing]

4. It still hasn't been rebuted

this is about who told the press... not whether it is accurate.


And this is such a non-issue, that it seems very Rovian - a la the Bush National Guard Story. Create a big controversy about the "source", to fool people into thinking the "substance" is in error.

[zbdent]

5. Isn't there actually an audio clip of Sarah Palin saying that the

"country of Africa" comment was out of context?

[Enrique]

6. a la the Palin library censorship story

phony list gets circulated that they can easily debunk, which casts doubt on the actual story which is in fact not in dispute.

[Enrique]

2. just to be clear

it is still undisputed that McCain people leaked this story. What was debunked was Shuster's reporting about who exactly it was, to which I say who cares?

Btw, I believe that the McCain people are lying about this, that they're out to get Palin, and that's the real story.

[predfan]

3. Didn't Karl Cameron ( SIC) of Fox News report this first?

I remember him saying he got this info first hand , and promised not to tell it until after the election.

[ErinBerin84]

7. The blog wasn't the original source of Carl Cameron's reporting

(which NBC's Kelly O Donnell also reported on...McCain aides told her the Africa story too, she said it on Hardball a few nights ago) Cameron's producer confirmed it to tv newser (that the blog wasn't the source)...the blog just tried to take credit as the source in a blog post a week later, and MSNBC did a segment on it...but even during and right after the segment, Shuster said it was fake. Stupid.