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. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?
“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh . . .

They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.
“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.
Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
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.”
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.

Due to an editing error in a Feb. 8 report in "Blogging Baghdad,"
we incorrectly reported that the Prophet Muhammad was killed instead of
passing away peacefully. His grandson, Iman Hussein, was killed in the
680 AD battle that is commemorated during the Shiite holy festival of
Ashoura. Link

“Ryan,” Carton said, “Are you gay?”
Silence.
“Ryan, are you a homosexual?”
With that, Seacrest was headed for the door.
“I can’t stay here, man,” Seacrest said. “I gotta jet.”
The “American Idol” star stormed out of the studio and into the NJ-101.5 offices, but he was coaxed back into the studio with the understanding that the rest of the interview would center on the television show and not on his personal life.
“This was supposed to be about the show, about ‘American Idol,’” Seacrest said when he returned to the air.
Co-host Ray Rossi, an admitted “Idol” fan, was ready to move on, but Carton wouldn’t let up.
“Are you gonna walk out again if I ask you about it?” Carton asked Seacrest.
“Absolutely. I’m outta here,” said Seacrest.
Immediately, Carton asked “Are you gay?” “You know,” Seacrest said, “I don’t know why I trusted you.”
And, again, Seacrest was out the door, this time for good.

Pretty shocking, huh? Well, it was a prank. That wasn’t Seacrest on the air; it was an impersonator. As a story in Newsday noted, this isn’t the first time this radio show has pulled a prank. “During yesterday’s show, Carton recalled the duo’s interview three years ago with singer Bobby Darin, who had died 30 years earlier,” it noted.
“Carton also promised that listeners can expect another scam three years from now.”
As is frequently the case, the story spread from the Trentonian to other papers such as the Philly Daily News and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gawker also noted the item. The DJ later revealed the interview was a fake, causing several outlets to run corrections. We’ve noted some below. One problem, however, is that the Trentonian’s original, incorrect story is still on their site without any correction appended. (The paper did run a corrective article, which is excerpted below.)

Dan Gross would like to apologize to Ryan Seacrest and to Daily News readers for an incorrect report in his Thursday column. It was not
Seacrest, the host of Fox’s “American Idol,” who stormed out of an interview with New Jersey 101.5 Wednesday afternoon. It was an imposter. “Jersey Guys” hosts Craig Carton and Ray Rossi were interviewing a Seacrest impersonator when they repeatedly asked whether the TV star were gay.

Seacrest’s publicist Meredith O’Sullivan told Gross yesterday her client has never done an interview with New Jersey 101.5, but had nothing else to say about the radio prank. Link

An item in Friday’s Peach Buzz about American Idol host Ryan Seacrest storming out of a radio interview was incorrect. New Jersey 101.5 did an interview with a man pretending to be Seacrest as a hoax, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, the original source of the information. Link

You know how it didn’t really make sense that Ryan Seacrest would be doing a live, in-studio radio interview in New Jersey? And how it didn’t really make sense why, after the first time he walked out of the studio because the DJ asked about his sexuality, he would have agreed to continue the interview? Yeah, well, it now makes sense that it didn’t make sense. Because it turns out it didn’t actually happen… Link

We were scammed. Local radio station New Jersey-101.5 pulled an on-air prank Wednesday afternoon and we fell for it.
So did other media outlets from New York to Philadelphia and beyond — including The Trentonian.
During Wednesday’s “Jersey Guys” broadcast, host Craig Carton told listeners that television’s “American Idol” host, Ryan Seacrest, was there inside
the Ewing studio as part of a publicity tour for the show.
Yesterday, however, Carton revealed that the whole thing had been a hoax and that he’d enlisted someone with a similar-sounding voice to act the part of Seacrest.
Listeners – and media outlets – were fooled by Wednesday’s fake interview… Link

1. Alessandra Stanley, TV critic: 137 citations, 20 corrections, 15%
2. Anna Kisselgoff, dance critic: 22 citations, 3 corrections, 14%
3. Caryn James, film critic: 33 citations, 4 corrections, 12%
4. Michael Kimmelman, art critic: 53 citations, 6 corrections, 11%
5. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic: 41 citations, 4 corrections, 10%

One little note: Some corrections contain more than one error, so the number of corrections doesn’t necessarily mean the number of errors. Not to say that this nitpick negates Gawker’s interesting research.

In my August 25 post I made a mistake...

The blogger I cited was not Jeff Jarvis, of www.buzzmachine.com (http://www.buzzmachine.com), but Jay Rosen, of New York University. Since I linked to the correct post (http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/08/19/ab_rlfwd.html), many readers may well have caught the error and therefore were not materially misled. Still, I’m sorry for the sloppiness, and I apologize to Jay Rosen and to Jeff Jarvis. In his courteous E-mail pointing out my mistake, Rosen notes that many people confuse him and Jarvis and wonders why. My reply was that both have first names starting with J and both seem (to me anyway) to specialize in intelligent press criticism not from a right-of-center perspective–a small category, I think.

Link

August 22, 2005

Judy Miller Address Correction

The address to send books to Judy Miller was incorrect. The error
was caught by C.J. Satterwhite, a news assistant for City Weekly, who
had a 34-lb box of books returned to her.

Here is the correct address:

Barbara Brincefield

Cahill, Gordon, Reindel

1990 K St. N.W., Suite 950

Washington, DC 20006