Sorry to butt in but....
ABC News has just came with a good rundown of the whole thing.
It covers who said what and when they said it, Eisenstadt being a fake, the events with Fox, MSNBC and the whole ball o' wax.
ABC News - Eisenstadt, Africa Comments, etc..
From what I can gather it went down like this..
1. Fox runs their "anymon source" says Palin thinks Africa a country story.
2. A couple of guys think, "Oooh..nice opening" - and they have their creation, Eisenstadt claim that he is the source and that he is high ranking
in the McCain camp. (Neither point here is true. It would be like me saying I'm Batman. Its just something they made up.)
3. MSNBC thinks Eisenstadt is real and runs with it at as story.
4. MSNBC realizes what they have done and says "oopps - my bad".
5. Story hits the net and here we are on ATS talking about it.
As for the men behind the Eisenstadt scam and why they did it, they say..
Mirvish said that while the Eisenstadt character eventually turned into a way for him and Gorlin to bring light to the media's overuse of
anonymous sourcing and punditry, the idea initially grew out of the partners' desire to write a television series.
It looks like they did a pretty good job.
Anyway, like lots of things in this thread so far I'm sure things will still be spun 6 ways to Sunday. However, it looks like Fox opened the door
with their "anom source" story. The con guys said they were the source. MSNBC didn't check their story and ran with it - only to have to say
"oops" later. Neither MSNBC or Fox is totally blameless.
The only real winners are the guys that made up Eisenstadt as they proved their point. The media is apt to run with any 1/2 baked story they happen
across without doing much (if any) verification on it.
[edit on 14-11-2008 by Frogs]
