Palin Suggests Interviewers are Journalistically Unethical and Have Problem with "Joe Sixpack"

I think perhaps Michelle Obama spoke too quickly when she said she is proud of her country(men). I guess she had not met this one yet. Governor Palin may be the next one, after she drinks her six-pack, to vomit on the Prime Minister of Japan. John McCain did work with President Reagan but is Alzheimer's catching?

Oh, good grief. She gives an interview that is much smoother and more solid than her previous ones, and none of you media folks are talking about her answers on abortion, gay rights, evolution, etc.-- answers that show that she is NOT the far right nut bar media wish to spin her as. I have to wonder about the questions that elicited these answers of course-- reminiscent of the infamous Kitty Dukakis question from a long-ago debate (don't want ya'll to think I only defend Republicans. *G*), Couric asked an inflammatory question related to abortion. She didn't ask "So, are there any exceptions to your belief that abortion is morally wrong?" Instead she challenged, "So, if a fifteen year old girl is the victim of rape or incest, you still think she should not have an abortion?" (I may not have the wording exactly right, but that's the basis of her question.) She immediately followed up with a question about the morning after pill. Somehow not the phrasing of questions she tossed to Joe Biden last week. She wasn't challenging him constantly, asking him to defend his statements that a drunk driver killed his wife and daughter when the driver was not under the influence. That would have been tacky, I agree, but so were the questions she was presenting to Palin and that didn't slow her down a bit.

Anyway, today, rather than a post on the subject of, "Hey, remember all those silly rumors about Palin being a hard-core strict creationist, complete with silly ideas about the devil and dinosaurs? Remember how so many folks fell for that, including Matt Damon and other Hollywood types who lambasted her for views she never even held? Well, last night's interview should put those rumors to rest, as she presented a perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable support for teaching evolution in school and talked specifically about keeping faith out of the science classroom, as her father the science teacher always did." I didn't see that post here, Mr. Tapper. I remember people rushing to knock down persistent false rumors about Obama, from Muslim faith to fishy birth certificates. So why not defend Gov. Palin from the kook rumors as well?

No, we'd rather focus on the one awkward moment in the interview, when she declined to get specific about her reading matter. Know what? At that point in the interview, after all the questions Katy Couric has posed to her over the past week, I think I would have blown my top in Palin's shoes. I would have withered her by asking if Katy planned to ask Joe Biden about his choice of news sources, or Obama, or even McCain. We all know how ridiculous it would have sounded for Katy to ask such a question of these men. Yet, no one questions why on earth she was quizzing Palin about it. Palin is quite within her rights to wonder what the catch is, where the gotcha is hiding, and thus wisely declining to get specific. Does Katy really think Palin has never read a major newspaper? Do you? Get serious. Stop being so insulting.

Let the media question Obama's claim on foreign experience. His claims are
1. He grew up Indonesia.( as a child).
2. Visited Pakistan when he was young Muslim.
Nobody questions that.

"Yet, another PERFECT example of media bias. WHY in the world is what papers Palin reads front page news?"

One of what 8 blog posts in a day is front page news?

Always go to see a right winger get themselves up in a lather over nothing.

Palin stated that even though she only just got a passport, she got her "world views" from reading all these materials that were available to her. So the next logical question is, what did you read?

Everyone's views are formulated by their experiences. You all know the saying, once bitten twice shy. What we are shy about what we experienced.

So Palin said to Couric that she did not go to Europe like other kids. She worked and learned about the world by reading.

So then tell us what you read. It is not a gotcha question or a biased question. Palin by her prior answers set herself up for this question.

She is running for VP here folks, not student council. She placed herself in this position. If she were to be VP, she will get asked much tougher questions and by people whom as she said, "hate our freedoms" and what will she do, bat her eyelashes and say, "very clever, but that's a gotcha question, I'll have to get back to ya."

Please. The woman cannot put a sentece together. She speaks in glaring generalities and her answers are non sequitors.

Finally, I thought reading was fundamental. Heck all of you here can point to this site as to where you get your news. Palin could not point to one single publication, not even the Anchorage Daily. Tragic.

But, go ahead, let Joe Six-pack who has never even been to that little island from where she can see Russia be part of running this country. That is exactly what we need, a pretty face that lacks in any substance to lead us in these difficult times. Great.

We do not know Gov. Palin.She has not been before the American public long enough to be considered for the vice presidency.People want to compare her to Senator Obama.He has been under public vetting and interaction on a national scale for about two years now.If all of you people want to get upset because she was asked what publications she reads...This is just a dumb defense of something that is indefendable.The woman may be president.I mean did Katie ask about that probe into that investigation against her.Katie should.Why in the world people want to treat a possible law maker like a beauty queen I never know.Bottom line is Palin needs to be asked all the hard questions just like Obama,McCain and Biden have and will.This election is not a game, hockey or anything like it.

Palin is a disgrace. She is pitiful. She overcompensates by being overconfident. She should quit the VP race and stop her fantasy and go back to Alaska.

Yet, another PERFECT example of media bias. WHY in the world is what papers Palin reads front page news? Perhaps she didn't want to single out any newspapers to seem unfair. Are you suggesting that she doesn't read the news? Honestly, what rubbish!

And yet, you continue to ignore the HUGE issues of Obama's involvement with ACORN, his thug tactics using tax funded police to suppress freedome of speech in Missouri, or "Obama youth" creepily being forced to sing songs about Obama. THAT is news.

You tell us, Mr. T, why should the public trust ABC, or the media, when you have clear ridiculous and obvious bias like this? What exactly are you afraid of, that would make you ignore such significant aspects of Obama?

BrooklynDem,

"We have a President who's proud of the fact that he doesn't read newspapers or magazines. What's the big deal?"

My thoughts exactly! Liberals feel, conservatives think. So long as liberals make decisions based on the way they feel, rather than reasoned analysis, there is really no reason to waste time trying to gain insight by reading or watching the MSM.

For example: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created to assuage liberal guilt (emotion). When Republicans tried to regulate fm/fm (S190 for example), guilty liberals circled the wagons around other guilty liberals (Raines, Johnson) to cover the looting of the GSE's.

The MSM, still to this day, hasn't made a big deal about the fact that the looters of FM/FM are on the messiah's campaign. And they still haven't placed any blame on the defenders (guilty white liberal Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus) of giving loans to people with no money.

Another thing, no Republican could ever get away with having a mentor like Frank Marshall Davis, a minister like Jeremiah Wright, and a "business partner" like Bill Ayres. EVER!

The MSM are complicit in the fraud that is Obama and indeed, Democrats. Normal people are rejecting the MSM en masse. It just proves that Republicans are like everybody else.

Bhrandon

You're right. I can't believe that the McCain campaign doesn't pay attention to every leftist pronouncement that some Obama sycophant has written a new book...or that they'd ignore your emails.

That's the proof that McCain isn't ready to be president?

Are you allowed to vote?

Who watches Fox News?

Their viewers had McCain winning the first debate 82 percent to Obama's 16 percent.

Fair & Balanced.

We have a President who's proud of the fact that he doesn't read newspapers or magazines. What's the big deal?

Palin whined about gotcha jouralism, "...so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago. But I’m not going to pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful. I’m going to take those shots and those pop quizzes and just say that’s okay, those are good testing grounds. And they can continue on in that mode. That’s good. That makes somebody work even harder. It makes somebody be even clearer and more articulate in their positions. So really I don’t fight it. I invite it.”

Zinger 1: What nespapers and magazines did you read?
Ouch, what a shot!

Zinger 2: What did you read specifically?
Ugh, what is this, a pop quiz?

Zinger 3: Can you name a few?
Oof, how unethical!

BTW, Bhrandon, nice cut n' paste from huffpo. That tells us all we need to know.......

This was a perfectly legitimate question to shed some insight onto where her views come from, and by whom have her opinions/positions been biased or shaded. Had she answered People magazine, the local news, and USA today, we'd be able to conclude that she is heavily influnced by mainstream, popular culture media. Had she answered The New Republic, New York Times, and Huffington Post we could conclude her influences are left leaning/liberal. If she answered Rush Limbaugh talk radio, Fox News, and US News and World Report, we'd be able to ascertain that her views are skewed to the right based on the conservatively biased sources she relies on for her information. If she truly read them all, she could have given a selection from each of the three areas (left, middle, right) and would have been able to offer some sort of evidence that she is well-read and open to dissenting opinions, and has thus shaped her own views based upon her understanding of all the positions. Her answer was ridiculous, and was paramount to taking the "fifth".

The McCain camp is claiming it didn't know about Gwen Ifill's book prior to agreeing to her as moderator for the VP debate:

I confirmed for us here on GretaWire: the McCain campaign did NOT know about Gwen Ifill's book (I think I told them when I made my efforts - emails about midnight - to find out!) I am stunned....the campaign (actually both) should have been told before the campaign agreed to have her moderate. It simply is not fair - in law, this would create a mistrial.

If that's true, it just shows the McCain campaign's incompetence. The debate moderators were agreed to on August 6. Ifill's book was reported in the Associated Press two weeks earlier:

"We have an awkward history about how to talk about race in the nation and in newsrooms," says Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," slated for publication early next year.

Of course, when you have Drudge on your side the facts don't matter much.

the book deal is simple

ifills book was announced before she was chosen as a moderator

the campaigns must agree on the moderator of any debate

so, either

the mccain camp didnt do any research at all, or they didnt see a significant problem with her as the moderator

the fact that they claim they didnt know now, should show you how incompetent the mccain camp is

Greymatter,

"I get most of my info about world affairs from the newspapers."

Let me guess...Democrat?

There's an interesting current at play that I think the MSM is missing. The presidency & congress (as well as most companies and law firms and yes Wall Street) have been populated by knowledgeable "went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton read the WSJ/FT/NYT watch CNN/CSpan" types - who by and large have gotten it wrong ... in the sense of performing the way Americans want them to perform. So why use that as some baseline foroffice?

There's nothing condescending about the question if you actually read newspapers. Calling it condescending assumes she doesn't read anything, with the implication that it's in fact good not to read anything (maybe reading is considered elitist in some parts). And Katie the elitist is out to rub it in. So go suit yourself.