"Palin Media Avoidance Watch, Day Seven" -- Even ABC News is criticizing the media-ducking HOKEYmom.

Palin Media Avoidance Watch, Day Seven

September 05, 2008 12:13 PM

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was named to the Republican ticket one week ago, and she has yet to answer questions from reporters.

Yes, some of the comments from the punditocracy about her have been untoward, even sexist, but given the importance of the job she accepted Wednesday night in her nomination speech, it's entirely reasonable for voters to expect Palin to answer questions from journalists about her positions and her record.

If Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Joe Biden, D-Del., refused to answer questions from the press, the RNC and the McCain campaign would never stop carping about it -- and rightly so.

In fact, they have done so in the past when Obama has gone several days without talking to the media.

So what are we to expect from Gov. Palin?

Time magazine's Jay Carney tried to get McCain spox Nicolle Wallace to answer this question the other night.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/palin-media-avo.html

The McLame camp thinks they can get away with sheltering Sarah from media for the rest of the campaign. That's what the preemptive strike about "smears and bias" was all about - laying the groundwork for her claim that they are not worthy of sitting down with. Well, I call bullshit. Even the American people are not THAT stupid.

The media is finally growing a spine. The one thing they can't take is being deliberately ignored. After all, if McCain got away with ignoring them, they'd lose their reason to exist.

then they will turn into full "pitbull with AIDS" mode ...

and not answer questions. The arrogance...

If McCain can appear on the news programs despite his recent hissy fit about bias there's no valid reason for Palin to dodge them.

Ditto for the old man. Time for some hardball. No free air time for the bullshit peddlers until they answer questions in front of the American people. Haven't we had enough scripted events from those in charge during the last 8 years? :argh:

Hopefully, journalists of every political stripe will fall on Palin like a ton of bricks and criticize the McCain campaign for doing everything it can to keep the voting public in the dark as to who this person is.

But if they get away with it and someone like Palin can actually be elected without having the American public fully exposed to her positions on the issues, what's next? Will the next election involve a blackout of the Presidential nominee as well? Will elections degenerate into nothing but feel-good videos on the candidate, political ads, teleprompted speeches at conventions, and canned and scripted town halls? To me this smells like fascism and the makings of a dictatorship, where only the official message gets out, as well as the end of political journalism.

I hope the push-back from the media is intense. I also hope this turns off the independents completely. Independents, after all, by definition do not vote the party line but vote for the person, according to their knowledge of the person. If they smell an attempt to hide information from them, they could get very angry. I hope they do.