Fooling the news media (maybe Palin knows where Africa is!)

Great Debates
1

Meet Martin Eisenstadt, the source of the “Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent” leak. He’s a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy.

Well, that’s his name when he’s on camera. Off camera, he’s a spoof “expert” ad blogger created by a man named Eitan Gorlin. He fooled MSNBC, Fox News, the LA Times, the New Republic, and Mother Jones, among others over the last few months. He claimed to be the source of the Africa leak along the way, although that is not true.

If the name “Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy” didn’t make you at least raise your eyebrows, you may be a member of the press.

So why did they do it?

And why did it work? Because basically, they’re right, of course. Not that the political press never fucked up in the past, but standards have obviously not kept pace with the explosive growth of the 24-hour news cycle and the internet. As a result, I was taught in school that people trust the press less than politicians and used-car salesmen. And if you look at something like this, why shouldn’t they? “Trust but verify” appears to have been updated to “Hurry up and publish, and verify if you have a minute.”

It’s been clear for a long time that a determined and moderately clever prankster or political operative can manipulate the news media without a great deal of effort. It’s not like the motives and patterns of the press are a great mystery to anybody. Everybody wants to be the first with a story, and failing that, nobody wants to be last, and they’re all competing for the same eyeballs. This is a pattern that just begs for manipulation. You don’t need to be a master forger to pull this off, you just need a fairly plausible story.

To a lesser degree, I think the Eisenstat case shows how moronic this over-reliance on experts is. If you’ve read my posts here before you know how much I complain about this in the news, and it’s one of the major reasons I avoid the TV news except to see election returns. Surprise surprise, it’s not hard to fake a resume. Who knew?

So, if you’re still reading… what should the press do to correct this? Is it just common sense - look harder at your sources and stop pretending you have to meet the deadline for the morning paper when your story can be reported any time? Be more aware of potential holes in the system? I’m not mad at Gorlin, personally. I think it’s funny. But of course, it exposes a larger problem that needs to be dealt with.

2

The press needs to do nothing. If you don’t wish to be fooled, you need to learn to think critically. (generic you that is)

3

Very reasonable course of action. And that would lead to the propagation of fewer silly stories, I’m sure. I guess what I’m wondering is if there are any specific safeguards that should be taken, or if it’s all just a matter of applying common sense. You may be right that it’s just the latter.

4

Something that differentiates the print media from television is that the print media print retractions and corrections when they’re wrong. This is something that cable news channels tend not to do, and if they do admit that they made a mistake, it’s just an anchor person saying “Sorry, that report the other day wasn’t true.” Because the medium is more ephemeral, these retractions/corrections are even less likely to be seen.

I have the impression that the feeling in the cable news room is something like “well, if this turns out not to be true we can just have a show in a few hours about the real story. We’ll have corrected the mistake and no harm done!” So because the medium itself is ephemeral, quality reporting suffers.

As to what can be done about it, I think that the answer is that accuracy needs to be valued, and it needs to be an acknowledged that people will lie on the air, and those people need to be shunned. The whole point of the news shows is to disseminate “the truth” and those people who repeatedly fail to do this should be sidelined. I think that the reason that cable news shows don’t go back through old clips and actually replay what public officials said in the past (a la the Daily Show) is because they are in on the game. It’s against their interests to actually hold officials accountable because then someone will ask the obvious question “didn’t your show used to say thing x, and now you say thing not-x? What has changed?”

This isn’t exactly coherent, because I’m not completely awake yet this morning, but that’s what I think the problem is.

Also, Eisenstadt is not the source of the Palin-Africa leak. That’s the point of the story: he’s a fake pundit who claimed to be the source of the leak but was, in fact, not. I think that the hoax you’ve highlighted is actually fairly minor. Namely, a random person on the internet took credit for being the source of the story. The story isn’t that Nixon was set up; it’s that a crazed street preacher with a “The End is Nigh” sandwichboard said “I am Deep Throat” and the media believed it.

5

I said so in the OP. I put it in the thread title as a joke, and as a suggestion that maybe the initial leaker of the Africa was also faking it. I don’t believe that rumor. Not that I have proof, but my suspicion is that at most, the Africa thing was a miscommunication or at worst the work of an aide who blamed the loss on Palin.

I agree. I think it’s a good jumping-off point for the larger issue, though, because you can see he fooled a large variety of outlets for an extended period of time, even if he did not do anything significant.

6

Wasn’t there a “performance artist” back in the 70’s that made a career of pulling similar pranks, sending out fake press releases for press conferences that had him posing as a newsworthy expert or bureaucrat?

In any case, I’m not sure that todays newsrooms are any more vulnerable to someone making a fairly unpredictable and determined attempt to fool them then they were in days past.

7

I don’t think it’s possible in a world where the distinction between news and blogs is exceedingly thin. The MSM is constantly playing catch up. How many people get their news primarily from Drudge, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or The Straight Dope? There are methods by which information is vetted, but at the same time it’s very easy to get caught in the echo chamber of what you want to believe by surrounding yourself only with information presented by sources you trust, ie sources that largely conform to your own ideological leanings.

The 24 hour news cycle leads to a system of information moving very rapidly, at a pace where principled verification will lead to you getting scooped every time. The bottom line is that reporters and bloggers are people subject to the same vagaries of critical thought that anyone else is. Expecting them to have a higher level of rigor than you expect from yourself is silly. Sure you can develop sources you trust, individual people who you find to be trustworthy, but in the end you are still a slave to your own ability to discern the facts.

8

People need to be discerning on their own, that’s very true. But seeing as how only a select group of people get spots on the TV news or have their work printed in newspapers, I think it’s fair to expect them to be more discerning - through practice if nothing else. I’m fine with the press being held to a higher standard. Unless you just like to hear yourself talk, and I don’t discount that as a motivation, there’s no point in having a Situation Room or whatever if you are not attempting to be definitive and share the truth with others. It’s a business, but this is also supposed to be a public service, and it goes without saying that the public is ill-served when members of the press are completely lacking in skepticism and credulity, or apply those ideas only selectively.

9

Wait. What? I can’t expect reporters “to have a higher level of rigor” in their “ability to discern the facts” than I do myself? That’s their job. Collecting and presenting facts.

I expect doctors to know more about medicine than I do, I expect mechanics to know more about cars than I do, and I expect bankers to know more about money than I do. Is it too much to expect reporters to know more about vetting factual information than I do?

10

That’s nice and idealistic, but unrealistic IMV. I expect Bankers to be good at their job too, but…

11

I hate to say it but I think defamation lawsuits should be more easy to bring.

Seems to me “reckless disregard for the truth” should apply. If you are the media and reporting on “X” without verifying that “X” is true then that seems reckless disregard to me. It is their job to verify reports as best as possible. As long as they have mad a credible attempt at verification they should be off the hook even if “X” turns out to be untrue.

Remarkable claims should require remarkable proof.

Obviously this should not be taken so far as to paralyze reporters but as I understand it bringing a successful defamation suit is very, very difficult and especially so for those in the public eye (such as Palin). IIRC Kay Hagan in North Carolina is suing Liddy Dole over her “Godless” ad for defamation. I hope Hagan follows through on that and wins. More of those and people will hopefully think twice about what they toss out into the media maelstrom. I doubt we can trust the media/blogoshpere to police itself or people to engage their bullshit meters as they should. At least nothing suggests that is the case now and I see no reason it will change unless their feet are held to the fire.

12

It does. That’s probably where you heard the term. :wink: To successfully sue for defamation, you have to prove either “actual malice,” that is, that something was created just to harm you, or “reckless disregard,” and prove that it damaged your reputation.

And rightly so, otherwise you can imagine how many lawsuits would be filed over any kind of negative coverage.

She dropped it a few days ago.

13

Perhaps Dick Tuck, a thorn in Nixon’s side for decades?

14

Understood.

I merely think the media (or anyone acting as a “reporter” by publishing news in whatever fashion) should be held to a higher standard. It should be part and parcel of their job to try to determine the veracity of what they are writing.

Again, if it is negative that is fine. As long as they have at least made a good faith attempt at verification they should be protected. In the Palin case there is no attempt at verification that I can see. They picked up the story and ran with it. IIRC just reporting what someone said has not been sufficient in the law’s eyes.

15

They are held to a higher standard. The problem is that it becomes difficult to hold them to a higher standard legally without also making it easier to sue them if they print something that somebody doesn’t like.

I agree completely that there should be a lot less reporting of unsourced rumors. Not for legal reasons, but that would reduce some of the problems mentioned in this thread.

Probably not, but there are other criteria involved, as outlined earlier.

16

Good thing we’re all immune to it here, though. I mean, if someone just started a rumor that Palin faked her pregnancy, the natural skepticism of the SDMB would be utterly immune to the lure of such a story. I pity the poor fools who lack that filter.

17

Which part of the news media reported that story?

I still think your being too critical of the media Marley. They were fooled by someone who put a lot of effort in trying to fool them, in an area where they didn’t really have any reason to expect someone to lie about (surely I’d expect them to be skeptical of the Palin-Africa story (I am), but not of someone simply claiming to be the source of said story once it was already released by another outlet).

18

Is this really all that different from the hundreds of fake crime victims in the past? This is why the press is not history - the daily, and now hourly, press reports and then retracts where necessary. Really major stories require more probing, but this isn’t a major story. I assume they called the Fox reporter who broke it, but he’s protecting a source and is no doubt not going to comment either way.

Your title, while typical, is dangerous in a way. What better way to cast doubt on true but damaging stories than to unleash a cloud of hoaxsters around it. Sure, you and the stories do mention that this doesn’t change the story any, but a lot of people will get the impression that the story, not the fake source, is the hoax.

19

I didn’t see CNN or anyone report the story as true, but the rumors were certainly reported. That’s why Palin disclosed that her daughter is pregnant.

The people who first reported the Africa story (Carl Cameron?) would have known. The Harding Institute Web site, by the way, refers to Harding as “the Great Leader of 1921-1923” and says he was frequently called “America’s first Black President.” It even links to a New York Times story that makes it clear they’re being ironic, because Harding was purported to be 1/16th black by someone who was out to smear him.

It’s easier to judge after that fact, but like I said, I think there were some easy clues that this was a joke. Did anyone even Google the guy or his institute after he claimed to be an adviser? When you rely on experts and unnamed sources for so much material, this kind of hoax becomes easier to perpetrate. That’s one of the points I’m trying to make here.

I don’t think I’m holding anyone to an unfair standard here. Making a mistake in the course of doing the job- that happens sometimes. There’s nothing you can do to stop that from happening on occasion. What we’re talking about here, I think - overreliance on experts, reporting rumors, getting fooled because you’re in a hurry - these are systemic errors that can in large part be avoided. The political press does not have to report every rumor before it’s substantiated.

Exactly. And when journalists fail to distinguish between the hoaxters and the real thing, they do a bad job of informing the public and cast doubt on themselves. Which, like I said, is part of why I was taught the “used car salesman” thing pretty much on day one in college.

20

Yep. Course, nobody’d do anything like that today.
www.nytimes-se.com