An Analysis of How Eisenstadt Tricked the Internet
As has been pointed out to me, this post lacks necessary background info. I have hastily pasted some in from the NYtimes. Hope this can remedy the problem until I get back from work. Apologies! I am running late.
An Introduction to the Martin Eisenstadt debacle from an article in the NYtimes:
"It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. "Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks," Mr. Shuster said.
Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.
And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character."
Link to the NYT article
"An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. 'It had not been vetted,' he said. 'It should not have made air.'"
No, duh. I would expect a little more mortification from the network, and an explanation of how they intend to prevent this from happening again. (Of course, this may not be the full quote.)
What is particularly interesting to me is how the hoax was designed to get past the hooey detectors of the those hip to the internet. I am always angered by people who attack Wikipedia in general as an unreliable source. Wikipedia is a good source if you know how to use it. Having grown up with the internet, my generation has developed a kind of intuition that allows us to discriminate relatively successfully concerning what is credible online and what is not, as well as what internet research is appropriate for and what it is not. And, before one uses this hoax to attack the validity of that intuition, one should consider that the same kind of intuitions are developed for approaching any kind of information source, whether it's a newspaper, a book, etc. Nonetheless, this hoax offers an interesting look into the pitfalls of our developed internet intuition.
This hoax was designed (or evolved) to breach internet intuition is a variety of ways.
1. The character speaks through multiple media: his blog, You Tube videos, press releases.
2. He gains credibility through his association with the fictitious "Harding Institute," which in turn gains credibility through the appearance and design of its website.
3. The volume of content on his blog and the volume of content on his website also enhance the character's credibility.
4. The clever mix of fact and fiction first enhanced the believability of his blog as a McCain advisor, and, in the end, it was what fooled a network news channel.
5. Time. There is an unstated corollary on the internet that the more time put into a publication, the more the creator has invested in it, the more likely it is to be true. The website and blog design along with the volume of content are testaments to the amount of time invested in the task. Unfortunately, the earlier unstated corollary is based on the assumption that the motive of the creator is to inform, not deceive.
5. Time. The greatest virtual hoaxkiller is time. Eisenstadt's longevity as evidenced through the posts on his blog and the seeming-permanence of the Harding Foundation further disarmed the critical faculties of internet savvies. If it's been around for so long, then someone would have noticed if it were a hoax. In fact, there were already internet sources debunking the hoax. Time for Eisenstadt was running out.
6. Flying just below the radar. Eisenstadt gained enough visibility that he was quoted on blogs. And he gained enough visibility to be debunked on blogs and other internet sources. But those debunking agents weren't quite visible enough to make the myth of Eisenstadt common knowledge. And Eisenstadt wasn't quite visible enough to be debunked by an agent with enough visibility to make his nonexistence common knowledge. Now, however, in a blinding flash of network news channel celebrity, the Eisenstadt light has burnt out. The jig is up, his creators know. In his most recent blog post, Eisenstadt defends himself against allegations of his nonexistence.
So what does this hoax mean for the internet as an information source? Well, if you work for a news agency, it means that you don't assume something has been vetted until you receive explicit confirmation. Does it call for the end or the slowing-down of the 24-hour news cycle. Not really. Thorough plodding journalism has its place (I hope!), but a return to that on all fronts would make major news agencies obsolete in terms of the daily buzz. Blogs and other less formal news sources are an achievement and a phenomenon of great importance, but we remain best informed when "the daily buzz" is available from various types of sources.
To a small degree we must throw absolute certainty in favor of great probability. What the internet demands of major news agencies are people of the same ilk as police informants. I don't mean convicted criminals, but people who have their ears to ground, who are linked in to the pulse and the day-to-day currents of this vast sea of information--people whose immersion makes their intuition highly developed and their awareness broad and thorough. Captains of the internet, we could call them. No doubt, they would have steered MSNBC away from this hazard.