Sheldon, et. al.:
Let's keep the discussion on point and about journalism, not about whether I have a right to my opinion or if Palin is qualified to be president.
Mainstream journalists need to:
1. Base their reports on fact, not just quotations.
2. Verify what those sources claim.
3. Ascertain the motive of anyone leaking information.
4. Use anonymous sources sparingly.
When those components appear to be missing, or under-emphasized, we should take that into account. Moreover, when a component of our stories may be the subject of a hoax, however indirectly, our suspicions ought to be heightened. And when the tidbit seems too nifty to be true, we need to follow-up.
If I were Carl Cameron, and this were my story, I'd surely get to the bottom of this as a matter of integrity and trust.
We do have common ground, and your blog would have been better served by acknowledging that in the spirit of new media interaction rather than defending your thesis by using the old-media shortcut "apparently" in your misargued last sentence.
But then again, you're entitled to your opinion.
brilliant satire. and you wag your fingers...have you seen the orson welles film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072962/">f for fake</a></i>? this is spot-on, well-timed art.
everything you know is false. the previous statmemt is true. as nelson muntz would say ha ha.
as if fox isn't the epitome of noise and confusion anyway. their brand of truthiness has helped reality-based conservativsm believe this is a center-right country for too long.
this isn't journalism we can believe. pwned.
My point is that nothing about the Eisenstadt hoax has any bearing whatsoever on the question of whether Carl Cameron's story is accurate. Eisenstadt was not the source of Carl Cameron's story.
If you want to doubt the veracity of Cameron's claims because he cited anonymous sources, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. However, your opinion in this matter should not be based on anything that "Martin Eisenstadt" has said or claimed.
Once we remove Eisenstadt from the equation, what we're left with is your circumstantial argument that Cameron's story sounds somehow implausible because it is "just too nifty to be believed." However, reality is full of odd events and coincidences that would seem implausible if not for the fact that they actually happened. Some of the most popular conspiracy theories currently in vogue are built around just the sort of reasoning about implausibility that you have offered here.
My personal opinion is that Carl Cameron's story about Palin not knowing Africa is a continent actually came from some member of the McCain campaign. I think the story is probably superficially true but not particularly interesting or informative about Palin. I myself have found myself stumbling over the words "continent" vs. "country" when talking about this story, so it's possible that Palin's alleged confusion may have been nothing more than a slip of the tongue on her part. There are multiple stories from various sources (not just Cameron) saying that McCain advisors were unhappy with Palin. Moreover, her actual performance in the Katie Couric interview and other moments during the campaign suggest that Palin is indeed capable of coming across as very shallow and uninformed about a variety of topics. It's possible, therefore, that the "Africa is a continent" story was a case of Palin making a minor slip of the tongue which irked McCain's advisors because they were generally irritated with her anyway. They then told the story to Cameron because they were letting off steam and because it made a good anecdote. In the end, therefore, the "Africa is a continent" anecdote doesn't tell us anything about Palin that is important or that we don't already know.
As for the reason why I think Cameron did indeed get the story from McCain's own advisors: First, Cameron was obviously very close to the McCain campaign. He has a long-time reputation as a Republican sympathizer, based on his affiliation with Fox News, the general slant of his reporting, and the fact that [http://mediamatters.org/items/200410050005 his wife campaigned personally alongside members of the Bush family] on behalf of Republican candidates. During the 2008 election, Cameron followed along with the the McCain campaign and obviously had lots of access to McCain's advisors. The day before the election, he said that he [http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/breaking-fox-news-reports-mccain-camp.html had the opportunity of sitting across the aisle from McCain] on the campaign's plane. By his own account, he held off on sharing his inside information about Palin's shortcomings until the day after the election, at the request of the McCain advisors who shared that information with him. (The day <i>before</i> the election, Cameron was reporting that the McCain camp were more optimistic than ever of victory, and that "Senator McCain's enthusiasm is now higher than it has been in 14 years I've been covering him." In short, Cameron is the sort of journalist who delivers the McCain camp's party line.
Based on these facts, I would be very surprised to learn that someone other than a McCain campaign insider was the source for Cameron's claim about Sarah Palin and Africa. It's still certainly possible that the claim itself is untrue. (Maybe the McCain camp floated this story as part of their effort to shift the blame for losing the election onto her instead of themselves or McCain.)
In any case, there is no reason to believe that Cameron's story is a "hoax" or that it came from outside the McCain campaign. I don't happen to think that Cameron is a very good journalist, and I don't think his specific revelation about Palin and Africa is important enough to deserve the attention it has gotten. People are repeating the story because it's entertaining, not because it really tells us anything that matters about Sarah Palin or about politics. To say that a campaign anecdote is trivial, however, is not the same thing as saying that it is a hoax.
I put this up on D.U. a couple of days ago, but it bears repeating!
"...the unintended consequences of the Other Side's putting people in the spotlight on the basis of their ability to read a script -- who all know their 'movement conservatism' mantra's backwards and forwards -- but don't know how to think.
The most recent one I saw was a couple of days ago, when Palin was responding to criticsm that she 'didn't know' Africa wasn't a country. In her quoted reply, in my hometown paper (the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), she said:
"If there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA, and about the continent versus <b>the country</b> {emphasis added} when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context..."
...Africa there... At one time, I was a naturalized Minnesotan, but that still sounds awful.
But the main thing in that quote was -- She did it again!
Instead of using the plural, or saying "the individual countries," or "the community of African nations," maybe, she failed to make the critical distinction between
"One continent"
and
"Many countries."
What a maroon.
Those are my favorite weasel words, and I keep hoping for Stephen Colbert to do a "Tonight's Word" riff on them.
I agree with you (and I look forward to reading Sheldon's response) that Cameron sticking to his story doesn't quite make it "apparent" that Palin thought Africa is a country.
However, Palin did say you can see Russia from Alaska, as if that helped qualify her to be president.
Yes, you can see the easternmost part of Russia from the westernmost part of Alaska, but she'd have to be able to see maybe (I'm too lazy to look up the exact distance) 7,000 or 8,000 miles farther to get a sense of Vladimir Putin's soul from Anchorage.
To me, for what it's worth, that bespeaks a pretty scanty knowledge of basic geography, and thinking Africa is a country and not a continent seems fully <b>consistent with</b> that. So whatever the truth of this matter, if Palin ends up as president after all I hope she'll at least pick a secretary of state who knows geography better.
Pages