Palin and the Press

By BJ

Yeah, she's gone into hiding, and that should raise questions about Palin's readiness to become Vice-President. The problem is that it won't, not really anyway. Glenn Greenwald lays it out in a great post at Salon:

Of course Carney is right in theory that anyone running for Vice President ought to submit to questioning from the media. But the idea that her doing so will be some great blow against propaganda is wrong for numerous reasons. Who are these great, aggressive journalists who are going to question her in a meaningfully adversarial way in order to expose the falsehoods behind the image that is being created around her?

When they decide in a couple of weeks that Palin is ready to do so, she'll go and sit down with Brit Hume or Larry King or Charlie Gibson or some other pleasant, accommodating person who plays a journalist on TV and have a nice, amiable, entertaining chat about topics that are easily anticipated. Having been preceded by all sorts of campaign drama about her first interview and the excitement that she's not up to the task, her TV appearance will be widely touted, score big ratings, and will be nice entertainment for the network that presents it. It will achieve many things. Undermining propaganda isn't one of them.

This idea that she's some sort of fragile, know-nothing amateur who is going to quiver and collapse when subjected to the rough and tumble world of American journalism is painfully ludicrous, given that -- as the Canonization of the endlessly malleable Tim Russert demonstrated -- that imagery is a fantasy journalists maintain about themselves but it hardly exists. The standard journalistic model of "balance" means that the TV journalist asks a few questions, lets the interviewee answer, and then moves on without commenting on or pointing out false claims, i.e., without exposing propaganda (Carney can check his own magazine to see how that sad, propaganda-boosting process works -- here, here, and here). Few things are easier than submitting to those sorts of televised rituals.

. . .

Carney is exactly wrong. Propaganda thrives -- predominates -- in our democracy for many reasons, the principal reason being that we don't have the sort of journalist class devoted to exposing it. Anyone who wants to contest that should examine the empirical data above, or more convincingly, just look at what the Bush administration has easily gotten away with over the last eight years -- the systematic deceit, the radicalism, the corruption, the crimes.

The ideological extremism and growing ethical questions that define Sarah Palin -- and especially the discredited, rejected core beliefs of John McCain -- means that the McCain campaign should have much to worry about in this election. Having Sarah Palin face the mighty, scary American press corps certainly isn't one of them. That's just a melodramatic distraction, one that will redound to the GOP's benefit. Palin will "face" our media soon enough, and it will probably be the easiest thing she'll have to do between now and November.

Palin's background and education was in media, a few interviews with what passes for a press in the US isn't going to throw her off her game, particularly when they generally fail to call out politicians when they lie. Why do you think she keeps repeating the lie about being against the "Bridge to Nowhere" and that she's not a major earmark hog? Because she knows she'll never see a headline in the Washington Post or New York Times saying, "Palin Lies Again!". Instead, they'll just write what she says, and possibly, somewhere near the bottom of the story, they might, might, mention that what she says is "stretching the truth".

And I can pretty much guarantee that any interview she does will focus more on her daughters pregnancy than on Palin's (lack of) foreign policy views and experience, health care, taxes, jobs, financial plans, Social Security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And they won't be particularly tough because they're afraid they might lose that all-important access.

So forget the idea that the press will actually do its watchdog role. It hasn't for the last eight years at least, and if there is anything the Republicans have learned, and the rest of us should have learned, it's that hiding from the press doesn't make them more aggressive, as Greenwald points out, it makes them more eager to please.

Update:

No sooner posted than proof arrives. Via Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly, the Fact Checker has this to say about Palin's claim that she championed an end to earmarks and opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere"

The Republican vice-presidential candidate is overstating her opposition to earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere.

As Benen puts it:

That's an exceedingly polite way of saying she isn't telling the truth at all -- Palin supported the bridge project, campaigned on a pledge to build the bridge project, and took the federal money even after the project was scrapped. What's more, she didn't "champion reform" of congressional earmarks, Palin hired a lobbyist to help get her town $27 million in pork-barrel projects, some of which were condemned by none other than John McCain.

Just as importantly, the claims about Palin and earmarks have been definitely disproven, but Palin and McCain keep repeating them anyway, making their dishonesty all the more breathtaking.

What's more, Benen notes that these outright lies ar being lumped in with a quote from Joe Biden that's totally accurate:

In the Post's fact-checking piece, these two claims, Biden's and Palin's, are offered as relative equivalents. The reader is left with the impression that all the candidates for national office are fudging and spinning on the campaign trail.

But this is a false equivalency. Biden's claim is completely accurate -- McCain really has voted with Bush 95% of the time. Palin's claim is complete false -- she really didn't reject earmarks.

Why lump them both together as "questionable claims"?

Ah, my friend, because there must be balance.

Comments

[JWF]

Gone into hiding?

Please.

Obama is such a pussy he didn't even go on Fox until this week, and Palin is supposed to just have a presser with a pack of goons who've spent the past week slandering her?

You should concern yourself more with Obama's inability to string together a coherent sentence without the aid of a TelePrompter.

Using Socky McSuckpuppet as a source doesn't exactly lend an air of credibility to your post.

[Steve Hynd]

JWF,

Palin is supposed to just have a presser with a pack of goons who've spent the past week slandering her?

Yes.

She's running as Veep, not a contestant on American Idol. Is she gonna sulk if Putin or Amah-nutjob says nasty things about her too?

Regards, C