Thank God Martin Eisenstadt, the senior adviser to the McCain campaign who dropped the bombshell that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent, has finally revealed his identity so that the whole mess can be put behind the American people.
There's just one problem: he doesn't exist.
Welcome to the age of unaccountable news. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle, as typified by CNN, made the news more than just a time-sensitive commodity; it made news time-sensitive down to the second. The Internet, with its inherent ability to reach people across the globe in an instant with incredible ease, made the news a constantly shifting entity. What is the truth when the truth is updated with each page refresh?
Martin Eisenstadt is the brainchild of Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish, two filmmakers who invented the outspoken, often wrong character with a sitcom, not MSNBC coverage, in mind. The Harding Institute, of which the fictional Eisenstadt is a senior fellow, has an existence also limited solely to Internet.
It is unclear at this point in time how possible it is to hide something online, but it doesn't look easy. Put simply, in hindsight it is very, very easy to see that Eisenstadt is a fake. And yet no one, from fellow bloggers to political analysts on MSNBC (not to mention Bill O'Reilly) bothered themselves with even rudimentary research.
Like anyone who's hoax goes too far, Gorlin and Mirvish are covering their behinds by shifting the blame. They say fault lies more with the news organizations that swallowed their stories without even attempting to verify the alleged facts, and they are probably right.
The Internet today is a lot like television in the '50s: it's an untested medium for communication of ideas and it has the potential to be an incredible source of education. Television was supposed to make formal schooling obsolete, and look where that got us: Flavor of Love: Charm School.
Just because mistakes in the news can be fixed in the blink of an eye and the click of a mouse doesn't mean that the standards of journalistic excellence should drop even lower than it did at the pinnacle of election season.
Just because a person has been proven an easy target doesn't mean any new allegation should be accepted at face value. Palin's past led journalists to a cliff with tasty little morsels, and then Mirvish and Gorlin held a Ding-Dong over the edge.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
