Revenge of the nerds

Twice this week members of Big Media were discovered to be hypocrites and lying bastards.

Case 1: MSNBC reporter tried to entrap hackers at annual conference

MSNBC's Michelle Madigan tried to entrap Defcon attendees. Defcon, for non-nerds, is a hacker conference that was recently held in Las Vegas. Madigan attended the conference without press credentials, carrying a hidden camera in a shoulder bag. She had been trying to get hackers to admit to breaking the law.

Story at CBS's PublicEye. Video of Madigan being outed and tossed from the event:



Case 2: Forbes editor busted for faking a Steve Jobs blog

The author of the fake Steve Jobs blog has been outed. He's Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine. The kicker: he derided blogging in a popular article from 2005. InformationWeek

As Lyons notes on his personal blog, he was "the author, last fall, of the much-maligned Forbes cover article, "Attack of the Blogs." It was maligned because it described Web logs as "the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective."

Anil Dash, VP of professional products for blogging software company Six Apart and a longtime blogger, was interviewed for that Forbes November 2005 article. He is among several online commentators who see irony in Lyons' success.

"My initial temptation was to mark Lyons as a hypocrite," said Dash in a blog post. "Upon reflection, it seems there's a more profound lesson: The benefits of blogging for one's career or business are so profound that they were even able to persuade a dedicated detractor."

That's a lesson Lyons' employer appears to have learned well: Forbes said it would begin hosting Lyons' satire of Jobs on Monday.