Is the Mainstream Media Fair to Sarah Palin?

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at a tea party rally held by Americans for Prosperity at the Capitol in Madison, Wis., in April. Has the media been fair to her? (Darren Hauck/Getty Images)

For the most part, the answer is yes -- and here's why.

By Marc Ambinder

National Journal

Updated: May 31, 2011 | 10:50 a.m.

Does the political press corps--professional, accredited journalists as opposed to bloggers--apply a different standard to Sarah Palin than it does to other candidates?

First, let’s blow away a few straw men.

The outré conspiracy theories about Trig Palin not being Palin’s son. That lunacy was not taken seriously (and, indeed, was dismissed) by most of the media.

Palin was distrusted from the start. Maybe by John McCain’s staff but not by the media. Look at the rapturous coverage after her convention speech. When she was new and genuine, she was new and genuine.

Nothing that Palin has done since the election has given the political press corps any reason to collectively reframe its opinion of her. Her forays into policy have been more provocative than substantive. She quit her governorship in the middle of her first term. She popularized the misleading concept of “death panels.”

The political press corps fashions itself as an umpire, calling balls, strikes, and fouls and occasionally throwing people out of the game. This is an imperfect construction because it is often hard to divine the objective “strike zone.” Journalists, polls have shown, tend to have liberal social views; but for most reporters, the journey to figure stuff out begins there. For partisans, it ends there.

Palin gets mad when the “media” cover bloopers she makes, like her coinage of the word “refudiate.” The press--as distinct from the partisan media–-incorporates these errors into its lack-of-readiness narrative. Palin does not make a distinction between a political press corps that thinks she’s not ready and a tribal belief among some Democrats that she is not smart. She does not distinguish TMZ from PBS. In her world, Bill Maher is Katie Couric. The New York Times is Daily Kos. Palin seems to genuinely believe that the press is unremittingly hostile to her. She believes that her children have been subject to humiliation and harassment.

(More here.)