Sarah Palin MAULED, MINIMIZED AND MANHANDLED

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/09/07/ST2008090702690.html

Palin & Press: A Testy Start

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2008; Page C01

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- From the moment Sarah Palin stepped onto the national stage, she was mauled, minimized and manhandled by an openly skeptical media establishment.


That lasted six days. By Thursday morning, after a speech in which she chided the journalistic elite, the previously obscure governor of Alaska was being hailed by many of the same media gurus.

The media's tattered reputation has not fared as well, not after the frenzy over Palin's mothering skills, her baby and her pregnant teenage daughter. The uproar handed John McCain's team an opening to declare war on the press, his aides fuming over what they see as blatantly biased treatment of their newly anointed hockey mom and her family. Never mind that McCain has been a media darling for a decade, or that he guaranteed a feverish few days by picking a virtual unknown. Press-bashing plays well among Republicans: When Palin told the convention that she wasn't seeking approval from "all those reporters and commentators," some delegates began chanting "NBC! NBC!" and pointing to the television skyboxes.

Serious journalists have written serious pieces attempting to answer fundamental questions about Palin's record in Alaska and what qualifies her to be, in the endlessly repeated cliche, a heartbeat away from the presidency. That, by the way, is our job. It does not mean that journalists are, as Steve Schmidt, McCain's top strategist, told me last week, "on a mission to destroy Sarah Palin."

There is a touch of condescension in the way some pundits have talked about this moose-hunting woman from a distant frontier. But some of the anti-press criticism has been silly. "The elite media has gone after this woman because she didn't go on 'Meet the Press,' because she's from Alaska," former GOP congressman John Kasich said on Fox News. A new form of media bias: anti-Anchorage prejudice?