Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.

 
The Palin Fireline

El Gringo's post reminds me of the dangers of falling into covering horse races so perhaps I should bow gracefully from the field and let others write about the ebb and flow of the campaign. However just like the bored staffer at a departmental meeting grabbing for just one more donut, I too will dive at least once more into the Pool of Palin in order to clean up some debris.

First... tonight I was channel surfing and came across a CNN interview with the police officer that is the center of the troopergate investigation into Sarah Palin. A little while later, I came back through CNN and saw an interview with Palin arch-nemesis Lyda Green. Wow, CNN must be flooding the zone with in-state reporting on Palin, I wonder what the breakpoint is on flying commercial versus charter because I'm sure it was a question with finance given all the people the networks are sending up there to investigate Palin.

I'm still waiting for the similar in-depth investigation into Jeremiah Wright's church where Obama was a parishoner for 20 years. I'm still waiting for a member of the MSM to walk the streets of Hyde Park and discover how an Agent of Change and Audacity of Hope somehow escaped the mean streets of the Chicago Machine. I'm still waiting for the in-depth reporting from Anderson Cooper on the connections between Obama and the unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers. I am still waiting for the Elisabeth Buhmiller piece on the links between Tony Rezko and Obama.

It seems the media has spent more time over the past 7 days digging into Governor Palin's past and accomlishments than it has spent over the last 20 months digging into Senator Obama's. I'm exagerating... but not by much.

I have friends who deny that there is bias in media. That with all the professional jorunalism schools, progressive clean-up of the industry, they deny that in many ways the media of today is as much bent as it was 100 years ago.

Okay, perhaps they don't mangle the facts as much as they used to.. the 60 Minutes Texas Air National Guard story of 2004 nonwithstanding.

However, for as long as the attention of the media is like a spotlight, focused and bright on only selected topics, then it matters a great deal which topics are lit up and pored over and which topics escape attention. It also matters on how such decisions are made.

Earlier this year, the NY Times ran a story implying that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist. The story was more than a little shoddy and did no credit to the paper. However to even take the story as far that took an alert reporter who picked up some hearsay and followed it through with some questioning among a number of people. To me the crime wasn't that the article was published, but that no one showed a similar interest in Obama given the far more skeletons in his closet.

Okay, I'm not going to relegate Palin stories to the same dustheap as Jon Talton but I'll give it a rest and go back to reading analysis of the Arizona FY2009 budget.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 11:50 AM