More Palin Bashing: How CNN Misleads With Headlines

-By Warner Todd Huston
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CNN indulged a classic left media tactic by misleading with a headline in a recent piece on former Governor Sarah Palin. The headline, if read by itself, seems to be saying that Sarah Palin delivered a "gaffe-filled message," when the truth is that her message talked about gaffes, but wasn't "filled" with them per se. The effect was that the headline made Palin look worse than the story itself did. If all one read was the headline, one would get a far different opinion of what was going on than if one read the story that went with it.

On Nov. 26, CNN delivered this headline on its Political Ticker blog: "Palin delivers a gaffe-filled message".

Think about that headline. Doesn't it say to you that Palin delivered a bunch of gaffes in her message? If all you did was read that headline, you'd think she made a fool of herself with all sorts of incorrect statements in it. One suspects that CNN fully realized this fact.

The whole story arose after an appearance that Palin did on the Glenn Beck show last week. On that show, while speaking of the shelling that the North Koreans perpetrated on South Korea, Palin accidentally said that our allies were the North Koreans. Clearly she simply had a slip of the tongue and meant the South Koreans were our allies, not the North.

How am I so sure she knew the difference? Because not only did she quickly correct herself, but she had correctly identified which Korea was which multiple times in the minutes prior to her slip of the tongue. It wasn't as if she mentioned the Koreas once and incorrectly at that. It is clear that she understands which is which.

Naturally in its report CNN forgot to mention that Palin was correctly identifying the Koreas multiple times before the gaffe.

In any case, after Palin got illicitly lambasted by the left for a simple slip of the tongue, she issued one of her famous Facebook posts in reply to her critics. In it Palin delineated many of the verbal gaffes that Barack Obama issued since he began running for president and pointed out that the Old Media never made a big deal about all these many gaffes made by Obama.

So, let's get back to that headline, "Palin delivers a gaffe-filled message."

While it is strictly true that Palin's Facebook message is filled with gaffes, it is not a "gaffe filled message" in the way that the phrase is generally used. After all if someone says that one issued a "gaffe filled message" people assume that the person issuing the message is making multiple gaffes in that message. They don't immediately assume that said message contains a list of someone else's gaffes. They assume that the message issuer is making mistakes.

This notion is, of course, what CNN hoped to promulgate. They hoped to fool people that only read headlines into thinking that Palin made multiple gaffes in a message. This headline was meant to bash Sarah Palin.

Sadly, misleading with a headline is a very common Old Media tactic. They can bash with a headline -- all the while assuming a large percentage of their readers will read just the headline and skip the story -- and still claim to be giving "the whole story" by adding a story that seems to contradict the headline.

-WTH

Warner Todd Huston is editor of Publius' Forum and a contributor to Texas for Sarah Palin as well as Big Government, Right Wing News, and a number of other websites.

Sarah Palin: A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States

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Gov. Palin, the only potential candidate for president to have the intestinal fortitude to call out the corrupt lamestream media, did just that this evening on Facebook:

A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)

“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

- Sarah Palin

- JP

What if Sarah Palin had said such a thing?

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Joe Biden, the arrogant clown who is vice president of this nation, called a small businessman a "smartass" after the man asked him to lower taxes. The moronic Biden walked into a custard shop near Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend and tried to order ice cream. Evidently he didn't realize that he was in a custard shop, despite the large letters on the sign which read "C-u-s-t-a-r-d." He made this, the latest of his many gaffes, after the manager of Kopp’s Frozen Custard shop told him that his dessert would be on the house if Biden would lower taxes:

"What do we owe you?" Biden is heard saying in footage captured by WISN-TV.

"Don’t worry, it’s on us," the manager replied. "Lower our taxes and we’ll call it [the custard] even."

"Why don’t you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time?" Biden said a few minutes later.

Biden was in Wisconsin to campaign for leftist Senator Russ Feingold. Just days earlier, the vice president told a crowd at a Feingold fund-raiser that "there’s no possibility to restore the 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession," and he blamed George W. Bush, even though Biden's party has had control of both houses of Congress for four years and the White House for a year and a half.

Only after the idiotarian veep had some time to think about what a fool he had made of himself (or more likely was informed by one of his handlers) did he try to cover his own backside by saying that his insulting comment was just a joke. But Biden need not have worried about covering his read end. He has a national news media which is only too happy to do it for him, so the story hasn't gotten much play in the lamestream press.

Can you imagine the outcry from the media if Sarah Palin had been in the same situation and had said the same thing Biden did? It would be front page news in every paper across the country, and the story would repeat at the top of every hour on CNN and MSNBC for at least a week.

But Sarah Palin would never insult a small business owner in that manner. She does not possess even a drop of the arrogance which is repeatedly displayed by the president and vice president. Plus, unlike Obama and Biden, Gov. Palin admires and respects the hard-working small businessmen and businesswomen who are part of the engine which creates jobs and drives the American economy.

It has long been common knowledge that Joe Biden is a buffoon, though not many on the left will admit to it publicly. Now he has proven that he is also a no-class jerk.

- JP

The President of the United States said, 'countries like Europe'

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At Vocal Minority, the question is, "Will Obama Get the Palin Treatment for Calling Europe a Country?":

Now, of course I believe it’s a misstatement; I don’t honestly believe Obama thinks Europe is a country. But this embarrassing gaffe begs the question: What’s the difference between this and when Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country instead of a continent?

Answer: There’s actually proof of Obama’s misstatement.

Read on, here.

- JP

Sycasuse?

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The Obamunist lamestream media eagerly helped its Leftist masters ridicule Sarah Palin for pointing out a fact of geography when she correctly mentioned that the borders of Alaska and Russia are only a few miles apart.

But the same sycophantic media is quick to cover up whenever Obama demonstrates that he's not the brightest tube in the fixture, as ESPN did recently:


The genius-in-chief who thinks that Americans invented the automobile, that Austrian is a language and that he had been in 57 states (with one to go!) can't spell the name of Syracuse University. His excuse must be that most Syracuse athletic teams compete in the Big East conference, not the Ivy League, with which he is allegedly more familiar. We would bet the ranch that Sarah Palin, even with her humble degree from Idaho, knows how to spell "Syracuse."

h/t: Moonbattery

- JP

Sarah Palin Is Not Vice President of the United States

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Sarah Palin is not Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden has that job...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Joe Biden asked for God's blessing for the late mother of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen during a White House celebration of St. Patrick's Day - except the elderly lady is very much alive.

"God rest her soul," Biden said Wednesday night as he introduced Cowen and President Barack Obama.

Stand. Upchuck. God love ya, Joe.

- JP

Obama can out-gaffe Palin any day of the week

The Palin haters have now seized on an apparent mis-attribution in Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue in their never-ending, nit-picking campaign to discredit her. Such attempts are worthy of Wyle E. Coyote, the hapless cartoon critter who never manages to put the little road runner out of commission.

In the book, the former Alaska governor attributes a quote to UCLA basketball coaching legend John Wooden which actually comes from Native American activist John Wooden Legs:

"Our land is everything to us...I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it -- with their lives."

From the nutroots blogs to The Sporting News, Sarah Palin is now being slammed for getting the two surnames, which are similar, mixed up. This is very strange, considering that they had at first claimed that Sarah Palin had not actually written the book herself. But that's the left for you...

What if she had said, at a news conference in France, no less, that "Austrian" is a language? that would have been a major screw-up, and she would have been the laughing stock of Europe.

Or if she had bowed (or curtsied) to the Emperor of Japan when protocol called for a simple handshake? She would have been the laughing stock of Asia.

Or if she had, in exchange for two thoughtful gifts of historical significance from the British Prime Minister, presented him with some silly movies on 25 DVDS, all which are encoded in a format which is incompatible with DVD playback machines in the UK? She would have been a laughing stock in the British Isles.

Or if she had introduced the Mexican ambassador to a group of mostly Hispanic guests at the White House, and then, before the diplomat could get to the podium to speak, she had gone into the crowd and started shaking hands? What if she had referred to a Cinco de Mayo celebration as "Cinco de Cuatro?" She would have been the laughing stock of Latin America.

What if, in front of a worldwide audience on The Tonight Show, she had described her bowling ability as, "It's like — it was like Special Olympics, or something"? We don't think a lot of folks would have laughed. It would have been too much.

Yet Barack Obama, the god of the radical Left, did all of these things, embarrassing himself and his country in front of the rest of the world. Yet that same radical left seizes on the mis-attribution of a Sarah Palin quote and ignores Obama's international screw-ups. We were going to say that these Leftists have no sense of proportion, but we'll just leave it at, "they have no sense" and call it a day.

- JP

If Sarah Palin had said that (Second in a series)

From David Bass' The Gaffe Czar at American Spectator:

It's embarrassing that Biden would ask a guy in a wheelchair to stand up; it's humorous that he considers J-O-B-S a three-letter word; and it's revealing that he called Obama the first "mainstream," "clean" African-American presidential candidate.

But none of those have the impact of Biden's "October surprise" in the waning days of the general election campaign last year. At a fundraiser in Seattle, Biden warned a crowd of supporters that America would face "an international crisis, a generated crisis" within the first six months of Obama's administration "to test the mettle of this guy."

As it turns out, Biden wasn't exactly channeling Nostradamus in that prediction. Eight months have passed since Obama was sworn in, and no major foreign policy crisis so far. In other words, add another gaffe to Biden's growing list.

[...]

Biden's emphatic assurance -- "mark my words," he said -- that a crisis would erupt calls into question his judgment. The fact that he didn't soften his prediction with a qualifier shows once again that he shoots firsts and asks questions later, a dangerous trait for nation's No. 2 man.

The media, true to form, have ignored Biden's botched prediction. If Bush or Sarah Palin had forecast a similar apocalyptic thunderstorm that ended up a drizzle, it would be front-page news.

The only thing we want to know is how do the media whores who call themselves "journalists" sleep at night knowing that they sacrificed their professional integrity to be PR hacks for the Democrat Party?

- JP

Quote of the Day (May 31, 2009)

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From Tim Blair in the Aussie edition of The Daily Telegraph:

According to David Marr, speaking on the ABC’s Q & A, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was “thick as a brick”. Marr presumably based this assessment on a few verbal stumbles from Palin, such as the time she described two Christian preachers as “decent white folk” – only to discover later that the two men were black.

That’s the sort of blunder that can destroy a political career. Just as well, then, that Palin didn’t actually say it. Marr did, however, in the Sydney Morning Herald four years ago.

It gets even better. Read it all.

- JP