Bias-Shift Error: The Media's New Palin Narrative

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Mark Whittington must have the same model of media bias detector/analyzer that we own. He's sensed something that has also occurred to us, and he's penned this op-ed at Associated Content about it:

There has been a not-so-subtle shift in the way the media regard Sarah Palin. The old conventional wisdom was that Palin was a washed out, brainless bimbo. The new conventional wisdom is that she is a potential President of the United States.

Mark McKinnon, writing in the Daily Beast, thinks that Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012, but will likely be defeated. McKinnon states some very obvious reasons why Palin will run, from her fundraising acumen, to her creative use of media, both old and new, and the rise of the "Mama Grizzlies," a more picturesque way to label a constituency than "soccer moms," to be sure.

McKinnon is not sure why Sarah Palin can't win in the general election, but he is pretty sure she can't.

True, Palin is a polarizing figure, with as many people hating her as loving her. The media detest her, it goes without saying, and will surely do everything they can to destroy her.

For anyone whose political memory runs further back than last week, this evaluation of Sarah Palin has an eerily familiar ring. Thirty years ago, another former governor with a fiercely loyal following, but also just as fierce an opposition, who could use the media, who could raise money, and who had lost in a previous general election once before, made a run for the presidency.

The name of that former governor was Ronald Reagan...

Whittington is spot on in his observation that the lamestream media has changed its number one Palin narrative. Before, she was the brainless beauty that couldn't win anything other than Miss Congeniality honors in the Miss Alaska pageant. Now, she is the Republican most likely to win the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, but she can't beat Barack Obama in the general election. We've been seeing this across the media -- not just in McKinnon's piece, for one example, but also in this carefully planted piece in TIME by Mark Halperin, for another. Halperin, remember, is the son of Morton H. Halperin, who is Senior Advisor for George Soros' Open Society Institute. Both father and son are known for harboring "progressive" political views. And Soros is linked to a long campaign of slurs and lies that has been waged against Gov. Palin.

Halperin cites a TIME poll which he says shows Sarah Palin losing to Obama 55 percent to to 34 percent... "a lopsided margin that leads some Republican strategists to predict a wipeout if Palin is eventually chosen as the party's nominee." Our bet is that many of those same anonymous strategists have ties to Mitt Romney, whose supporters have recently mashed the throttle on their own campaign to try to kneecap Gov. Palin. What we have here is Romney's good ol' boys and Soros' good old boys acting in concert to try to take down the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate before 2012 rolls around. But the poll Halperin cites was conducted by an organizationw e never heard of, and its results are contradicted by the latest PPP poll, which has Gov. Palin and the president running side by side at 46 percent each.

The change in the media narrative about her and the ramped up attacks on Gov. Palin by liberal Democrats and Vichy Republicans are recent phenomena which have come to light in the wake of Sarah Palin's success rallying the "Mama Grizzlies" in support of conservative women candidates for the 2010 midterm elections. Expect to see many more articles from the media in which the anti-Palin bias is more subtle than previously was the case. There will be fewer personal attacks on Gov. Palin, because the media have finally realized that such a strategy doesn't work and in fact has hurt them and actually worked in her favor. Such articles will instead offer backhanded compliments and appear to be much more Palin-friendly. But a few paragraphs in, "Republican" sources will be quoted but not named, and those who are named will be Romney operatives. These sources will by and large offer opinions that Sarah Palin can win the GOP nomination, but she just can't win "the big one." These same "aides," "analysts" and "consultants" will say that a moderate, however, does stand a chance of edging out Obama in 2012. Someone like, oh, Mitt Romney, for example.

Journolist, the private media mailing list for getting leftist scribes on the same chapter and page, did not die when David Weigel was forced to resign from the Washington Post for blowing his cover. It just moved to a different server.

h/t: roy y

- JP