The Blog @ Spolitics

A Question of Judgement II

by Heywood U. Reedmore -- September 3, 2008 at 2:36 pm | In 2008 Election | 4 Comments

I wrote earlier about the press’s poor judgment in covering Sarah Palin. Howard Kurtz has an interesting article about how ticked off the McCain camp is about the collapse of journalistic standards. Here’s the money quote for just how low they’ve sunk:

Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels “under siege” by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child’s parentage.

Later in the article:

Some journalists, Schmidt said, have demanded to see Trig’s birth certificate, or have asked when Palin went into labor and whether her contractions increased or decreased as she traveled from Texas to an Alaskan hospital in her home town, Wasilla. Others, he said, have asked whether Palin’s eldest son, Track, who serves in the Army and is deploying to Iraq, is a drug addict. “Categorically false,” Schmidt said, adding: “This is crazy.”

However, Kurtz bungled one point pretty badly. He wrote:

McCain also canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Tuesday in retaliation for an interview a day earlier in which prime-time host Campbell Brown repeatedly pressed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds to provide one example of a decision that Palin had made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.

That’s an echo of the spin CNN gave to the episode and the way much of the media is trying to spin it. Although I believe most even-minded persons would ascribe the cancellation to the fact that the first three minutes of the interview focused on Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy and whether or not, in light of it, Palin was a bad mother for running for VP. Judge for yourself.

Update: Ross Douthat has more on the media blunders.

Update: NRO has more in an editorial.

Update: US Weekly is losing subscribers after it’s hit-job on Palin.