Less than a week after the announcement of Sarah Palin as the GOP VP pick, the right wing is crying foul at the media for their treatment of the Alaska Governor. Witness just yesterday, when the reliable right-wing talking point bulletin board/news aggregator/eerily influential website, the Drudge Report, listed quotes from negative newspaper columns about Palin, all taken from Northeastern Dailies, which Drudge quoted in successive order going southward from New York - The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun and Washington Post respectively. The message, delivered in Drudge’s own inimitable style, was plain enough: Northeast Liberal newspaper columnists have a beef with this homespun woman from Alaska. If there was any doubt as to where Matt Drudge came down on the matter, it was set aside today when he referred to Palin as both “Hurricane Sarah” set to sweep through the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN and the “ALASKAN WONDER” whose speech this evening was a “CHANCE TO FIRE BACK AT MEDIA” on his website.

The Drudge Report then went on to point out who Us Weekly had cast their vote for by posting side by side a cover of the magazine featuring Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife Michelle with a title “Why Barack Loves Her”, with a cover featuring Palin and her baby son Trig entitled “Babies, Lies & Scandal”.

But the story doesn’t stop with Drudge, the Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post published a column today by Andrea Peyser entitled “A Time Warped, Sexist Assault on Sarah Palin”. While the also Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal Editorial page published a piece, similarly formatted to Drudge’s list, of various newspaper columnists expressing discontent at the Palin pick. The WSJ piece unsubtly declared that “The Beltway class is in full-throated rebellion against a nondomesticated conservative who might pose a threat to their coronation of Barack Obama and the return of Camelot-on-the-Potomac.”

Beyond journalists criticizing their colleagues on the issue, John McCain himself has canceled a scheduled interview on CNN over his expressed disgust with the treatment his spokesman Tucker Bounds received from CNN anchor Campbell Brown during questions about Palin, previously reported here on TakePart.

While I can certainly agree that the media circuses that surround unusual events happening to high profile people in our society can be a major distraction from more important issues, I think it deserves to be pointed out that these sorts of press feeding frenzies happen to all sorts of people, with all sorts of backgrounds, positions and political persuasions. Witness the media circus around Princess Diana over a decade ago while dating Dodi Al-Fayed which tragically culminated in a Parisian traffic accident. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were certainly no strangers to the glaring eye of the press - focused by Mr. Drudge himself - during the President’s second term. Similarly Barack Obama and his wife have undergone intense media scrutiny digging as deep as the political views of their pastor and neighbors so far in this Presidential campaign. While many of us may have a distaste for the collective outcome of these media events, the fact remains that the press is what it is - if you give it a high profile person who’s attractive and has an interesting life story and add hints of scandal and intrigue you will have a media frenzy on your hands. If you do it with a VP pick during the last two months of a Presidential election you can multiply the previous sentence by at least ten.

Furthermore, the scrutiny of Palin is not simply tabloid gossip. The Alaskan Governor was until very recently an unknown commodity to most press organizations and American voters outside the 49th State. Failing to fully scrutinize and investigate an individual who could be within the cliched heartbeat of the Presidency would be an unforgivable omission on the part of the press at large.

You can takepart in assuring accuracy in the media sources you receive your news from by logging onto Media Matters.

LINKS:

• NY Times: The Caucus: Palin Welcomes McCain to Twin Cities
• Time Blog: The Palin Media Sexism Debate
• Yahoo! News (Reuters): Palin Tries to Silence Media Storm in Debut