Believing your Bias

I will be straight forward and admit that I am not a Sarah Palin fan. I could go into much detail about why not, but that is not the issue I wish to address. Why this is important is because last week, Fox News reported that McCain insiders said that Palin did not know that Africa was a continent and did not know which countries were involved in NAFTA. When these reports came out, I quickly send a text to my brother asking him if he had heard. I found great entertainment in this report. Now if you had asked me if I honestly believed that Palin did not know Africa was a continent, I probably would have told you that she most likely knew but misspoke, which was still enough of a reason to criticize her.

But as it turns out, I made a horrible assumption. A couple days after my journalism professor brought up the issue in class, a NY Times article was published revealing that the "McCain adviser" was actually a hoaxer. He had tricked the media into believing he was a true adviser by creating a blog with the name Martin Eisenstadt and by talking to the media.

Here is a link to the article with a picture of the man, whose true identity is Dan Mirvish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html

So you see that even I was fooled by this fraud. Clearly, this was not something that should have ever seemed plausible, that is the fact that Palin thought Africa was a continent. However, the recent studies on how little Americans know, combined with my own personal bias, led me astray. As seekers of truth, we must be careful to not let anyone, whether that person be some guy creating lies out of his gloomy office (Mirvish) or yourself, lead you away from the truth.