MSNBC hoaxed on Palin 'Africa' gaffe by fake advisor

Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones writes of being tricked by Eisenstadt on an another scandal:

A few hours ago, we (okay, I) posted a blog about a man claiming to be a McCain adviser who made ridiculous comments on Iraqi television about building a casino in the Baghdad Green Zone. In addition to the inherent absurdity of it, there was a lot of arrogance, cultural insensitivity, and racism thrown in. Other blogs had posted on the guy, and when I checked him out before posting I found his blog and a foreign policy institute claiming his employ. Turns out the blog and institute, like the adviser, were an elaborate hoax. It didn't help that the guy, in creating his fictional foreign policy expert, closely mimicked the name of a real foreign policy expert.


Here's why I got taken: I received an emailed press release reporting that the supposed McCain adviser had apologized for his comments about the casino. You're welcome to disagree with me, but I had no reason to believe that someone would invent a persona, a blog, a foreign policy institution, a video with a fake Iraqi television station, a press release, and an organization or email entity to send out said press release.

But frankly, there was enough info on the web that I should have sussed this thing out. This is a long way of saying I apologize and that I'm more than a little ashamed. I've taken the post down. Kudos to the inventor of this whole thing. My only consolation is that if I had as much time on my hands as he clearly does, I probably would have figured this out and saved myself a fair amount of embarrassment.

Even if he did exist, Eisenstadt doesn't appear to have been high up enough in the McCain campaign to be privy to Sarah Palin's private utterances. According to his own bio, his role in the campaign was "offering advice and liaising with the Jewish community in particular."

The New Republic has retracted its blog post; MSNBC's David Shuster very quickly admitted that "there may be some indications" the story was made up.

To be clear, none of this means the Africa story is false -- just that it probably didn't come from this source

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/06/m-thomas-eisenstadt-is-john-mccains-new.html
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/07/8923_hoax_alert_biza.html