The modern media’s 24 hour news cycle has changed the way the news is delivered and has pretty much destroyed the tenets of journalism. In order to get information out first and constantly refresh the news product, old rules about double and triple checking information provided by sources and investigating the integrity of those sources no longer fit the game.

Shortly after election day, Fox News ran a story quoting an unnamed McCain source as saying that Sarah Palin was not aware that Africa was a continent. Just a few minutes later, the story popped up on MSNBC after someone who saw the Fox piece e-mailed the tip to a friend in the MSNBC newsroom.

Instantly, e-mails and blogs started buzzing and those suffering from extreme “Palin Derangement Syndrome” were ecstatic over having more “proof” that she wouldn’t make it past the first round on “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader”.

Heres the problem, the entire story was a hoax perpetrated by a couple of guys trying to drum up interest in a television show based on a fictional character they have created.

Believe it or not, the NY Times actually has the story. Read about it here

If you are waiting for prime time retractions, don’t hold your breath.

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.

The creators of this hoax, know just how easy it is to take advantage of today’s media.

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.

Even MSNBC admits to the mistake

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.”

And while the MSM is easily fooled, bloggers are even bigger victims of information hoaxes.

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.

As for Sarah Palin, the damage is already done for now. No amount of retractions will make up for the hits her image has taken. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart will not be telling jokes about how stupid they were in repeating this nonsense. Maybe they should have written a few more jokes about the guy running for President of the 57 United States.

On the media level, there are no solutions coming. News organizations will not invest more time and money into vetting stories. Reporters and bloggers will not take more time to carefully check their facts in fear of losing out to competitors. The only solution has to come from us, the consumers. We just have to accept that every news story that comes down the road, is just a story and we can not rush to judgement.

We’ve certainly come a long way from that time, baby - we have the right to vote, e are CEOs, doctors, lawyers, priests, rabbis, ministers, accountants…And we continue to make up a large percentage of nurses, teachers, retail help…Our sports are now funded on a par with the boys thanks to the diligent work of women in the 1970’s to raise up girls and women in sports. And we now have women represented in the US Senate and House, not to mention a number of governorships. The most qualified candidate in the presidential field this year was a woman, and she got more votes than any other candidate EVER. That is pretty remarkable.

Bill Kristol said, “White women are a problem, that’s you know - we all live with that.”

And so it is that in the 21st century, while we may have come far, we have men yelling at a US Senator, a Former First Lady of the US and Arkansas, “Iron My Shirt!” You have college kids wearing t-shirts that claim, “Bros before hos!” You have TV newscasters calling the same senator a whore, and her daughter a pimp, on national television, and when he is rebuked for it, other male commentators lash out in anger. You have a network selling nutcrackers with the female senator on top, another station having an organization on - twice - whose acronym is an incredibly derogatory term for women. You have major party candidates making sexist statements to not only his fellow candidate, who is older and far more accomplished, but to reporters and other women. And it is brushed aside.

You have rampant sexism, even misogyny, eminating from newspapers, magazines, television, and rallies. You have the female speaker of the U.S. House claim she is too busy to document the sexism that has gone on during the campaign, dismissing it, and her female colleague, out of hand.

Women athletes have to sue the Olympic Committee for not having their sport represented, though their male counterparts have theirs. But in Canada, where the Olympics will be taking place, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex.* O, Canada! You rock!

Boston now has an operation designed to reduce the number of sexual predators on its subway lines with cameras, as well as involving the people to help stop these abusers. Way to go, Boston!!*

And, there is still a disparity between girls and boys in math and science in countries that do not offer equal access to education.*

There’s an “abstinence-promoting” magazine for high school girls, as well as one for boys, that presents inaccurate information as “facts,” and suggests the girls should dress “modestly.”* (*Facts taken from skirt.com, July 2008 Issue.)

So, yes, baby - we have come a long way, but we have a long way to go yet before that glass ceiling is truly good and shattered, before women are seen as full, equal human beings to men, before women stop being measured AGAINST men, with men being the standard (Anna Quindlen writes about that beautifully), before women do not have to fear for their safety when walking alone, whether in broad daylight or nightfall, before women no longer have to endure sexist jeers and attacks by our own media. Yes, we have a long way to go yet, but at least we are on the road.

Thanks to women like Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Lucretia Mott, and many, many others, for getting us going. Thank you for the struggles to the women in the early 1900s, some who sacrificed their very lives for us to be able to vote. To the women in the ’70’s who pushed against the restrictive standards, who fought for equality, who showed women as capable human beings who were more than the sum of their parts, I thank you. And to the men who supported us as we broke through some of the barriers.

We have more work to do, my sisters and brothers. Much, much more work to do, as this primary has shown us. But together, YES, WE CAN!!!!

No Quarter’s Bud White had a fascinating conversation with Heidi Li Feldman and Marc Rubin of The Denver Group. It turns out that Mr. White is a real pro (sort of a likeable and more intelligent Charlie Rose) and starts he things off with:

“Keeping the Democratic Party democratic.” That’s the motto of the newly formed The Denver Group. The Denver Group’s stated goal is an open, Democratic convention, with Hillary’s name on the ballot.

Their Web site says:
“To deny Senator Clinton a rightful place on the ballot in an attempt to foster a false image of party unity based on unofficial declarations by super delegates. It will fool no one and only create more disunity. It is in everyone’s best interest, especially the Democratic Party and its chances in November, to hold an open and honest convention.”

****

We’re joined this evening by the founders of The Denver Group, Heidi Li Feldman and Marc Rubin. Good evening to both of you. Thanks for joining us…

Please take a listen and we would love to hear your thoughts on this show.

The interview runs 1 hour and 10 minutes.
-FEC recognized 527 group.
-They want to make ads to be shown in the mass media.
-They want to make sure the Democratic party stays democratic.
-They want a fair and open convention.
-Please contribute money to help this cause; $5.00–$5,000; whatever you can do.
You can visit The Denver Group at http://thedenvergroup.blogspot.com
Heidi Li Feldman’s personal blog is Heidi Li’s Potpourri at http://heidilipotpourri.blogspot.com/
Marc Rubin’s blog is Tom In Paine at http://tominpaine.blogspot.com/
No Quarter is http://noquarterusa.net

Ms. Clinton has been confronted with signs bearing messages like “America deserves better than aristocracy” and “Got Pimp?” a reference to a recent remark by a now-suspended MSNBC host who claimed that Mrs. Clinton was exploiting her daughter.

To those of us who dare oppose Barack Obama, it’s not a surprise, sadly. The incredibly nasty, immature attacks against us are a daily occurrence, all day every day. But this is despicable behavior towards a very bright young, highly knowledgeable woman who is campaigning her heart out for her mother.

For more background on the source of the PIMP remarks — which emanated from the nasty mouth of David Schuster on MSNBC, who was suspended for two weeks (he deserves more punishment) — see these articles here:

• “Singled Out” as Fair Game by SusanUnPC

• MSNBC Pissing Away its Credibility by Larry Johnson
• Who Kidnapped David Shuster? by Larry Johnson

Photo caption: “Chelsea Clinton talking to supporters of her mother, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, on Feb. 8 at Bowdoin College.”

What even more remarkable in the article is just how very bright, and detailed in her knowledge of policy, the young Chelsea Clinton is:

[She blitzes] her targets with policy details. In a single hour of responding to questions at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire on Tuesday, Ms. Clinton talked about Medicare Part D, the distinction between the chronically and occasionally uninsured, health care premium caps, Pell grant allowance maximums, income contingency repayment programs for financial aid, sugar-based ethanol and carbon sequestration. That is not counting her detours into Romanian reproductive policy and the design of the internal combustion engine.

“It was a little over my head,” admitted Stephanie Biese, the founder of the Students for Hillary chapter on the Madison campus, about an exchange Ms. Clinton had with another attendee about nuclear base loads.

About the sexism:

But a furious, provocative essay that Ms. Clinton mass-blasted to her friends and acquaintances on Feb. 4 provides clues. She wrote that she did not agree with everything the essay’s author, Robin Morgan, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, said. (Ms. Morgan argues that Mrs. Clinton has faced not only a sexist double standard but also “sociopathic woman-hating.”)

But until jeering men insulted her mother in New Hampshire and the news media made light of it, Ms. Clinton wrote, “I confess I didn’t entirely get ‘it.’ ”

Read all of today’s NYT article, “Chelsea Clinton Talks Policy in Obama Territory.”

Here’s the link to Robin Morgan’s now famous essay: “Goodbye to All That #2.”

And I wrote about Morgan’s essay, and other women’s (including Erica Jong), here: “For All the SUPER Women.” (I confess I was truly disappointed that this article didn’t get more attention, particularly from women. It’s so important — take it from someone who’s old enough to remember just how nasty sexism once was, and remains (even though the MSM acts like it’s yesterday’s news).

And here’s Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft blog — who I happen to know is a male and (I’m 90% sure) a Chicagoan at that — but he’s one of the rare bloggers who’s unafraid to post about what he truly thinks, and let the chips fall where they may. I even think he’s leaning to Obama, but that doesn’t stop him from being a “truthteller.” Good for him!

I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal. - Barack Obama, February 15, 2008

In a campaign marked by news coverage unrelenting in its sexism and misogyny, especially from NBC, the last thing we can afford is sexism from the frontrunning candidate. Barack Obama needs to apologize for this remark.

From Robin Morgan:

—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.

—the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.  Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.  

Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has. 

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement.  She’s running to be president of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here. …

Read it all here.

You go, Robin Morgan. And YOU GO, CHELSEA CLINTON!