Links on Sarah Palin and the Media

What would our world be like if we didn’t have newspapers like the Washington Post falsely claiming Sarah Palin “slashed funding” for a home for teenage mothers and bloggers like the New Republic’s Michelle Cottle and Feministing’s Jessica Valenti thoughtlessly parroting them without checking the facts?


Yuval Levin writes,

The spectacle reveals a deep rot at the heart of the political press, and has been among the most shameful chapters in the history of modern American journalism. Not everyone has joined in, of course, but essentially all of the important institutions of our political press have played their part in one way or another. We can only hope those involved have begun to come to their senses, and that they recognize the magnitude of their failure this week. That doesn’t mean they should go easy on Palin: it makes sense to look into her past (as it would make sense to look into Obama’s past at some point before November too), and she certainly needs to prove herself tonight and beyond, as any vice presidential candidate has to. But the treatment she has received is not what just any VP candidate would get, and the attitude and assumptions underlying this week’s amazing assault raise very troubling questions about the cream of the crop of political reporters. They have shown themselves to be too insulated and too solipsistic to help the public better understand our politics, and too self-important to report on events as they happen. This is far more than media bias. Let us hope it is a passing episode.

Peggy Noonan has a good suggestion for the media after this last week:

The mainstream media, which has been holding endless symposia here on the future of media in the 21st century, is in danger of missing a central fact of that future: If they appear, once again, as they have in the past, to be people not reporting the battle but engaged in the battle, if they allow themselves to be tagged by that old tag, which so tarnished them in the past, they will do more to imperil their own future than the Internet has.

Wesley Smith suspects the media treatment of Palin might have something to do with her youngest son.

I hope I am wrong, and of course I cannot prove it, but I suspect that the ultimate cause of the liberal media's irrational loathing springs from the Palin family's joyful acceptance of Trig, a vivid rejection of the "quality of life" drive to wipe people with Down and other "defects" off the face of the earth. Such unconditional love stands in stark contrast to the pronounced lack of love that drives the new eugenics, burning the conscience like acid.

Here’s the text of Palin’s speech last night. I missed it but thankfully my wife thought to tape it for me.