Martin Eisenstadt's Double-Reverse Hoax
Earlier this week I took parting shots at Palin, mentioning (among other things) that an anonymuous source told Carl Cameron of Fox News that in pre-debate prep, Palin thought Africa was a country. This morning MSNBC reported that McCain policy advisor Martin Eisenstadt claimed credit as the source of the leak.
Except that wasn't true. Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times reported that Martin Eisenstadt was an impostor who fed the bogus "Africa" claim to Fox News in order to create publicity for a TV show pitch. Numerous bloggers cried out against the mainstream media for credulously repeating an unvetted story. theferrett apologized this morning for believing the hoax.
Except that wasn't true either. Fox and Carl Cameron had not been hoaxed - MSNBC had been hoaxed into believing that Fox had been hoxed. Eisenstadt had pulled the dreaded double-reverse-hoax. TNR, MotherJones, and other blogs have withdrawn their reports. Carl Cameron and Fox News continues to stand by their original story.
Of course none of this actually indicates whether the Africa story is true or false. It continues to be a report by a well-known reporter from a mainstream news organization using an anonymous source. Maybe the source is a disgruntled McCain staffer looking to smear Palin for eclipsing her running mate. Maybe the source is reporting genuine information. Maybe as Palin herself seems to have confirmed something did happen with NAFTA and Africa but the gaffe was "taken out of context". The gaffe continues to exist as a quantum superposition of truth and fiction, both and neither.
I think that's the lesson here. We speak about statements being true or false when they actually have varying degress of credibility. I am pretty darn certain that Barack Obama will be the next President, I am less certain at what time I will leave work this evening, I have no idea what this weekend's lotto numbers will be, and the thing about Palin and Africa seems like it's probably true but who knows.
The Native American language Hidatsa uses suffixes as a standard construction to denote how sure the speaker is that the statement is true:
-ski: speaker is certain of the statement's truth
-c: speaker believes the statement to be true
-wareac: the statement is regarded to be common knowledge
-rahe: statement based on an unverified report from someone else
-toak: the truth is unknown to both speaker and listener
If you end a sentence with -c and it turns out to be false, you were simply mistaken. But if you ended the false sentence with -ski, you'll be considered a liar. In the case of the Africa gaffe Carl Cameron's informant would use "-ski", Cameron himself would use "-rahe", I would use "-c", and you might use "-toak" to describe the same "truth" about Sarah Palin and Africa. I really like this concept because it would keep people honest and clearly communicate what people know and how they know it.
Except that wasn't true. Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times reported that Martin Eisenstadt was an impostor who fed the bogus "Africa" claim to Fox News in order to create publicity for a TV show pitch. Numerous bloggers cried out against the mainstream media for credulously repeating an unvetted story. theferrett apologized this morning for believing the hoax.
Except that wasn't true either. Fox and Carl Cameron had not been hoaxed - MSNBC had been hoaxed into believing that Fox had been hoxed. Eisenstadt had pulled the dreaded double-reverse-hoax. TNR, MotherJones, and other blogs have withdrawn their reports. Carl Cameron and Fox News continues to stand by their original story.
Of course none of this actually indicates whether the Africa story is true or false. It continues to be a report by a well-known reporter from a mainstream news organization using an anonymous source. Maybe the source is a disgruntled McCain staffer looking to smear Palin for eclipsing her running mate. Maybe the source is reporting genuine information. Maybe as Palin herself seems to have confirmed something did happen with NAFTA and Africa but the gaffe was "taken out of context". The gaffe continues to exist as a quantum superposition of truth and fiction, both and neither.
I think that's the lesson here. We speak about statements being true or false when they actually have varying degress of credibility. I am pretty darn certain that Barack Obama will be the next President, I am less certain at what time I will leave work this evening, I have no idea what this weekend's lotto numbers will be, and the thing about Palin and Africa seems like it's probably true but who knows.
The Native American language Hidatsa uses suffixes as a standard construction to denote how sure the speaker is that the statement is true:
-ski: speaker is certain of the statement's truth
-c: speaker believes the statement to be true
-wareac: the statement is regarded to be common knowledge
-rahe: statement based on an unverified report from someone else
-toak: the truth is unknown to both speaker and listener
If you end a sentence with -c and it turns out to be false, you were simply mistaken. But if you ended the false sentence with -ski, you'll be considered a liar. In the case of the Africa gaffe Carl Cameron's informant would use "-ski", Cameron himself would use "-rahe", I would use "-c", and you might use "-toak" to describe the same "truth" about Sarah Palin and Africa. I really like this concept because it would keep people honest and clearly communicate what people know and how they know it.