By now you've heard of Martin Eisenstadt, the hoax who claimed to be a John McCain policy adviser and planted such brilliant nuggets such as "Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country," but was actually an elaborate ruse cooked up by two filmmakers hoping to pitch a television show. Eisenstadt, played for TV cameras by a one Eitan Gorlin, even got Palin to respond to the allegations and rebutt them.
If Eisenstadt didn't dupe you, you're in the minority. Jossip fell for the ploy, as did MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and the New Republic, among others.
But Fox News says it had different "anonymous sources" on the Palin/Africa story. In fact, when Jossip on Friday published an item calling Fox News (and Greta van Susteren especially) "sympathetic" to McCain-Palin, an irate Irena Briganti (she of FNC's PR squad) emailed us to argue that Fox couldn't be sympathetic to Palin when when they "broke the story" about Plain know knowing Africa was continent. She added: "This makes you guys look seriously ill-informed……" And in a follow-up email, Briganti told us, "If we were so 'sympathetic' to Palin, we would have ignored a story which has severely embarrassed her…." So, Africa still is a country, and Jossip still is ill-informed. Got it! CONTINUED »
So the same guy who sold us on the old "Joe the Plumber making out with Kristin Wiig scam" apparently got Fox News and the rest of the country believing his story about Sarah Palin not knowing that Africa was a continent and not a country. Paging Harry Shearer. CONTINUED »
El Baño is the newest super-duper secret nightclub for X-clusive clientèle that will be making it's debut during Fashion Week, which is the proper time for fancy new night spots to reveal they're not wearing any clothes. It's already been getting all the necessary hype to convince dedicated second tier glitterati that they should have gotten their invitation "key" — yes, a physical thing — ages ago, so they can have the honor of entering a LES bodega to use the bathroom and be greeted into the secret society via sliding panel. Sort of like Skull and Bones meets Clerks. With more coke.
But before you start cursing the bourgeoisie, there are already rumors spreading that this club is so cool it doesn't even exist. And not just for plebs like you. CONTINUED »
Have you received your mass text from Obama yet, announcing his running mate? It's a little weird he would choose Rush Limbaugh for vice president, right? Oh, you think it's Michael Phelps?
Maybe that's because cells all over the country are being plagued by fake announcements for Obama's nomination. The senator's grand plan to embrace new technology while building endless hype around his VP nomination — by announcing his pick via text message — had the unintended result of allowing pranksters to confuse your parents more than cell phones already do.
And you only have yourselves to blame: CONTINUED »
Restaurants love to bandy about in awards they've received, often plastering their website, or even their eatery's window, with framed accolades delivered by various awards groups. Did James Beard think your roast duck was tops? Tell the world! And because every magazine believes its stamp of authenticity is worth something, many have developed their own awards, which make for excellent listicles to be trumpeted on the cover with numbers in their headlines. (For some magazines, these awards are also excellent revenue centers.)
Wine Spectator, then, is a magazine that hands out awards to restaurants that meet its strict criteria in offering customers a robust and well-selected wine list to accompany their roast duck and pappardelle bolognese. Its Awards of Excellence tell readers which restaurants around the world are their best bets for finding the perfect cab sav or pinot blanc.
Sometimes, though, Wine Spectator will — after vigorous scoring, lengthy research, and heated debate — recommend you visit a restaurant that does not exist. CONTINUED »
You're looking at the loneliest Prada store ever built. Its big opening was in 2005, but there was no party, and Miuccia Prada did not show up. Though behind the glass walls you will find shoes priced in the high three-figures, no money has ever changed hands here. Not a single swipe of an American Express card. That's because this Prada store — Prada Marfa, located in Marfa, Texas, on an empty stretch of Highway 90 — is not a Prada store at all. CONTINUED »
Generally the slowest news month of the year, August 2008 will go down in history as … the slowest news month of the year where animal-related stunts took over the headlines. There's already the Montauk Monster's coverage by the big boys. Now, some "Bigfoot Hunters" (SRSLY, check their RSMES) claim they've found the elusive beast, and dragged one of its dead corpses to a freezer, where they're going to conduct all sort of genetic testing while, presumably, posing for Abu Ghraib-style photos with it. When the Times got wind of it, they were like, "O RLY?," and decided to cover the story. But some "Bigfoot Researches" (like Bigfoot Hunters, not a real job) say what they've seen "just looks like a costume with some fake guts thrown on top for effect." For what it's worth, under normal circumstances we might be inclined to believe the hunters here, while keeping in the back of our minds that this is, most likely, almost certainly, a hoax. But in today's age? There's no way these guys are getting one iota of our respect, because every time we start believing in something magical, it turns out to be a viral marketing stunt for a shitty movie.
Well, we all saw this coming, though the slow August news cycle allowed for the clever viral marketing monster to survive for way longer than it would have if anything was actually going on these days. Now let's all buy our obligatory memorabilia and get back to Digging fairytale news items.
Not only is storm chasing a rabid hobby, but it's a career subject to the same "professional jealousy" as other industry where dollars and reputations are on the line! In, in language we can understand: Opportunities for gossip that's rife scandal!
As a doctored tornado video — supposedly of a Nebraska tornado last week, but more likely of a a Kansas tornado filmed four years ago with some haphazard editing — made the rounds to some 2,000 websites and 60 digital customers through distribution from Associated Press, blame is being thrown about every which way.
The AP blamed Andy Fabel, who they paid $295 for the video, for faking the clip after fellow storm chaser Dan Robinson of Appalachian Skies Media called foul. But Fabel insists the footage isn't doctored, and that he's being accused of faking it because people like Robinson are jealous of his "success." CONTINUED »
The Associated Press has pulled video footage of a Nebraska tornado that touched down last week after its authenticity has been questioned. The footage is, likely, taken from a Kansas tornado filmed four years ago, with the clip flipped horizontally, sped up, with power lines added and trees removed. The AP had paid storm chaser Andy Fabel an astronomical $295 for the clip. They will likely want their money back. [AP]
Because Rickrolling is all the rage with the kids, some pranksters had the bright idea to create the website FightTheSmears.org, a, um, companion site to FightTheSmears.com, Barack Obama's homepage for fending off Internet falsehoods. Except the .org version was a hoax site and, rather than come to Obama's defense, it perpetuated the rumors. (It's since been replaced by an explanation message.)
Clever! So clever, in fact, that MSNBC got caught up in the fake version of the site. While all this gets sorts out, we're going to long for the days of WhiteHouse.com, when it was a porn site. [video via NB]
Because you are not allowed to have a good laugh in the media industry, journalism ethicists are upset with the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News for running advertisements promoting a fake airline, without disclosing that the ads were just parodies used for marketing purposes.
"It is clearly deception," says Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute. "Newspapers should not be in the business of deception. I can’t imagine the Inquirer and Daily News would run fake ads from other companies."
But what if the ads were really funny? CONTINUED »
Did the Associated Press totally get hosed with one of the most infamous journalism hoaxes of recent memory? Maybe! Maybe not!
An article making its way through the wire service today reports that "researchers say they have discovered groups of the silver-haired monkeys in Indonesia that fish. Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust. The species had been known to eat fruit and forage for crabs and insects, but never before fish from rivers."
Huh. Because back in 2001, Slate writer Jay Forman wrote about something very similar, only about monkeys in the Florida Keys, not Indonesia — and they weren't the ones doing the fishing. Rather, locals (of the human variety) were baiting rhesus monkeys with apples. And then, in Feb. 2007, he admitted to making the entire story up.
As the Museum of Hoaxes remembers it: "The column was a colorful piece of reporting full of vivid observations about the art of monkey fishing. Who would have guessed, for instance, that oranges are the fruit of choice for baiting monkeys? But almost as soon as the article was published it attracted criticism. The Wall Street Journal didn’t believe a word of it, declaring that, “Slate Gets Hoaxed.” Michael Kinsley, Slate’s editor, fired back, insisting that his magazine stood behind the veracity of the story. But under the weight of continuing criticism Kinsley backed down. On June 25 he published an apology, acknowledging that key details in Forman’s story were fictitious."
So now that we've reversed the story here – with the monkeys doing the fishing – can we trust this new monkey fishing report? CONTINUED »
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the latest Internet crazy, suicidal vlogger 90 Day Jane – who promised to kill herself after 90 days of blogging about it – is a hoax. Remember what it felt like when you found out lonelygirl15 was just the industry's inside joke? Rinse and repeat.
The blog she started (since taken offline) was not, supposedly, "even to get attention." So much attention she received, though, that Ms. Jane even had television network talent divisions reaching out to her. (To provide better lighting for the money shot at the end?)
Alas, the site is offline, and so is Jane, without a production deal in sight.
Editorial Director
