“Piranhas of the Press” unfair to Sarah Palin, political writer says
The press should be ashamed of how it covered and treated Sarah Palin during and since the campaign, writes Carl M. Cannon, senior Washington correspondent for Politics Daily.
“The true villains in this political morality play may have been the press,” Cannon writes in an article titled “Sarah ‘Barracuda’ Palin and the Piranhas of the Press.”
Cannon describes himself: “I’m not a Republican or a conservative; I’m a lifelong journalist who was born and raised in this profession…” He writes:
The mainstream media is undergoing its demise, drip by drip, day by day, and its practitioners, which include most of my friends in life, are under considerable pressure. In my opinion, however, these pressures do not excuse the treatment accorded Sarah Palin. On the contrary, to me the entire Sarah saga revealed that it wasn’t only the traditional media’s business model that is broken. Our journalism model is busted, too.
He offers numerous examples of what he considers unfair press coverage. And his key example — and the subject of much of his article — is the vice presidential debate held in St. Louis:
The reason is what happened when the battle over Sarah Palin came to a head on Oct. 2, 2008, in St. Louis, Mo. That night, the press showed its colors - and they were Democratic blue. That was the night that Palin cleaned Joe Biden’s clock in their only debate, and nobody in the media could even see it, let alone report it. That was the night that the dual blinders of ideology and elitism prevented us being honest brokers.
Later:
Facts matter, the man said. But they didn’t in 2008, not when it came to Joe Biden (our guy) against Sarah Palin (odd outsider). The ladies and gentlemen of the press were more interested in her hair, her glasses, her wardrobe, her accent, her sex life, her kids’ sex lives, and her hunting habits than in whether her opponent knew anything about foreign policy, the Constitution of the United States, or the job he was running for. They still are. The relentlessly negative coverage of Palin goes on unabated — she’s the subject of a much-ballyhooed hatchet job in Vanity Fair this month — even as Biden makes minor news from time to time by continuing his penchant for gaffes, this time while serving as the second most powerful person in the federal government.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
-EJ, billhaas,
-Careful, he’s got lots of company…
Salon’s Camille Paglia has regularly chided the press for their obvious Palin Derangement Syndrome, and on Wednesday tried to once again explain the malady:
As a Democrat, I detest the partisan machinations that have become standard in Northeastern news management and that are detectable in editorial decisions at major metropolitan newspapers nationwide. It’s why I, like a host of others, have shifted my news gathering to the Web.
Responding to a reader’s question about the Alaska governor, Paglia referred to the “Northeastern media” as “vultures and harpies” as well as “preening bullies, cackling witches, twisted cynics and pompous windbags” as she took on Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum for the “faux objectivity” throughout his recent Palin hit piece.
This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum’s failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin’s extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin’s performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely “adequate.” Hey, wake up — Palin cleaned Biden’s clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.
The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton.
Boy, that was a long trip but you managed to get a “if Clinton did it” in there.
Dear dr.-You should’ve voted in some of the post debate polls as nearly all the networks and all the instant polls gave it to Biden but I guess liberal media just made that up, huh?
–No they didn’t make up the results, they weighted the polls 2-1 democrat.
For every one republican they polled 2 democrats.
–BTW, not my words, Camille Paglia’s…but in my opinion, she’s one of the sharpest minds out there.
Come on people! She is a journalism graduate that cannot name a newspaper that she reads? Case closed. Done. Oh yes, I seem to remember now, it took her 4 schools to get that ‘journalism’ degree.
You Betcha! Oh and lest we forget… she pals around with Secessionists.
Divine694U[?],
–I guess that would depend on your perspective.
y’know…viewpoint.
“Only fighters have the courage to quit”
-Sarah Palin
Uh? What sort of mumbo-jumbo hokum is that? I know another female politician who for 16 years was called every name in the book by her good conservative buddies (it was relentless folks), had every word or comment she spoke parsed by the media, had her wardrobe, hairstyles and weight scrutinized, had the pleasure of having her daughter made fun of by fellow pols … need I say more?
Hillary Clinton
Love her or hate her, she didn’t quit the political game, she fought even harder.
Palin’s comments just come off sounding like she has a chip on her shoulder the size of Alaska. Aside from the unfair and strange pregnancy story circulated by mostly bloggers and tabloids, a great deal of the criticism that Palin experienced was brought on by her alone. Perhaps if her “vetting” by the media and all the others who had no idea who she was wasn’t compressed into such a short amount of time (basically, just a little over 2 months from the time she was named by McCain), the process wouldn’t have been perceived as so unfair. Besides, does anyone really think that ANY relatively unknown politician who has been tapped as V.P. in the U.S. is NOT going to be thoroughly scrutinized? Considering our current reality, no way.
If she’s such a victim of the ‘liberal press’, why did she invite them all to watch her prance around in waders to ‘clarify’ her quitters aren’t losers or winners, or something, I still don’t get it, resignation speech?
I’m wearing waders to the next teabag party.
Just TODAY, one of the lead stories in the Post-Dispatch, and elsewhere, is the perspective of Levi Johnson (Bristol Palin’s ex-fiancee) on why Governor Palin is resigning….
…a LEAD story…
….and somehow, in the collective worldview of the mainstream media, the thoughts of Mr. Johnson are worthy of national importance.
Without even commenting on the snide comments by Washingont Post’s Sally Quinn yesterday, Carl Cannon’s excellent essay will become more relevant with each passing day.