The media has been running a story this morning that appears to be far from the truth. ZDNet examines how the AP created a myth about Hillary Clinton. What happened and how did it all go wrong?
This morning, a story about Hillary Clinton started appearing as breaking news. It all started with an Associated Press report claiming that Mrs. Hillary Clinton (or, more likely, someone on her staff) was “running her own electronic system for her official email” from her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York.
So while the story may have been something like this:
Hillary Clinton used a personal email account during her tenure as Secretary of State, instead of a government-issued address, undermining efforts to archive official government documents.
Hillary Clinton was found running her own mail server from her home...
At 8:09 a.m., the AP published: “CLINTON RAN OWN COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR HER OFFICIAL EMAILS.” In this, the AP publication alleged that not only did Clinton run a server, but that she also used a false identity, namely using the name “Eric Hoteham” to register the domain name
Later, the AP changed the story considerably. The headline became: “HOUSE COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS CLINTON EMAILS IN BENGHAZI PROBE.”
Eric Hoteham had even disappeared, like a typo. But even so, the damage had been done.
Across the internet, the name “Eric Hoteham” became a meme, and when the AP discovered that there was actually someone on Clinton’s staff named “Eric Hothem,” it quickly updated the article (time stamp 17:52), but made absolutely no mention that the content of the article had changed.
In fact, the AP changed the headline of the article once more. At 3:15 a.m., the headline was “CLINTON RAN HOMEBREW COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR OFFICIAL EMAILS.”
If you want to compare, here's a capture from Evernote with the original article at 03.05 am, a second capture at 08.09 amand a third, this time at 17:52 with the same story heavily revised.
By the way, the AP states “This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.”
What's even more ironic about this story is that the latest version of the publication addresses the uproar by stating, "A parody Twitter account for Hoteham appeared on Wednesday when the AP reported the news, sending out satirical tweets supporting the Hillary Clinton campaign."
Let us mention again that in the first version of this story, the AP described Hoteham (spelling error) as “a mysterious identity, named Eric Hoteham.” In the second version of the story, the AP introduced him as a Clinton supporter who had provided her with technical advice in the past.
The AP followed up on this whole situation, “Hoteham’s persona is also linked to a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a defunct website, wjcoffice.com, all of which are linked to the same Internet account that acts as Mrs. Clinton’s email server.” In the second version of the story, the AP changed “Hoteham’s persona” to “Hoteham’s registration.”
What impact does all this have on Clinton? Hard to say. Let the search engines do the talking. A Google search for the “mysterious” “Eric Hoteham” since the story broke yields at least 27,800 results. The next day, when the AP changed its story (but didn’t tell anyone), “Eric Hoteham” was in 46,400 results. That’s not counting Facebook and Twitter results.
