Daly: Media Can’t Bring Themselves to Detach Palin from Giffords

Really? Is it customary for someone falsely accused of a crime to reach out to the victim?
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John Daly, in an opinion piece published at BernardGoldberg.com, ranks the attempt to connect Sarah Palin to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting as one of the most egregious and "bone-headed media indictments of my lifetime":

Now, it’s lame enough when the media speculates on influences to murderers based on who authored the books that sat on their shelves at home, or who sang the songs they enjoyed listening to. But this was far more of a stretch. At the time the Palin connection was being suggested, the media knew practically nothing about the shooter. They had absolutely no idea of his political leanings. They had no idea if he even had access to the internet, let alone had ever visited the website of Palin’s political action committee.

And despite the concept of targeting districts being used for decades by numerous political strategists (often accompanied with visual representations off cross-hairs, targets, and bulls-eyes), its metaphorical context was selectively disregarded by many in the mainstream media for the purpose of creating a link to Palin. In their well-documented disdain for the former Alaska governor, many despicably went ahead and suggested that she could have been some sort of spiritual accomplice to the shooter.

In the end of course, Loughner was found to be a complete nut-case who former friends actually described as a “liberal” who regularly welled up in anger at the sight of George W. Bush. His longstanding, dangerous fixation on Congresswoman Giffords predated the Tea Party and Sarah Palin’s introduction onto the national scene. Palin was of no influence on him, nor was any coherent political ideology.

One would have thought that the revelation would have put to rest the reckless and politically-motivated media assault on Palin, but as we’ve found out over the last two weeks, it didn’t.

[More]

h/t: Conservatives 4 Palin

- JP

NewsBusters Interview: John Ziegler

All bets are off when it comes to attacking Gov. Palin
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NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard recently interviewed film maker John Ziegler on the release of an expanded version of his documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin was Targeted. Here is an excerpt:

NB: You've added 45 minutes of new footage from the original film. What can viewers expect?

JZ: We took a lot of the episodes that occurred in relation to the film after its original release and I provide commentary of what really happened behind the scenes. We show clips and I tell some great stories involving Matt Lauer, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Norah O'Donnell among others. We also tell the real story of what happened when I was arrested at the USC journalism award ceremony where Katie Couric was honored for her bogus Sarah Palin interview.

NB: You had an interesting interview with Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer last week. Tell us about that.

JZ: Very bizarre. I called Parker out on her "endorsing" Obama and she flat out lied and claimed she never did so. That kind of shocked me, but not as much as what happened when I also called her out on being part of the "assassination" of Palin 1.0 as I refer to her pre-Fox persona. She was so off guard that I think she panicked and made the really strange statement that she "led" the assassination of Palin. She practically bragged about it, which is stunning considering she is supposedly the only full-time "conservative" on CNN, which says more about the inherent bias in the media than just about anything else.

NB: How do you think the coverage of Sarah Palin has changed since the 2008 elections?

JZ: Well, among certain circles, mostly on MSNBC and in the entertainment world, it has actually gotten worse as the dam has totally broken and it has become accepted that all bets are off when it comes to attacking her.

But the most important change is that Palin and the media now have a weirdly symbiotic relationship wherein they need each other. If the entire media complex decided tomorrow to stop covering her, she would have greatly reduced impact, but they would never do that because she is so good for their ratings.

I also think the success of Bristol on Dancing with the Stars has changed things a bit, once again to her advantage, as millions of nonpolitical people get to see the Palins in a mostly positive light.

[More]

- JP

Gov. Palin: Media's refusal to vet Obama 'coming home to roost' (Updated)

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Gov. Palin, in one of her frequent appearances on the "Bob and Mark" morning program on Anchorage FM station KHWL, criticized the media for not vetting Barack Obama before the 2008 election and said there are important lessons to be learned in John Ziegler’s documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin was Targeted:

"We know that Obama wasn’t vetted through the campaign, and now, you know, some things are coming home to roost, if you will, which is inexperience, his associations, and that ultimately harms our republic when a candidate isn’t — isn’t vetted by the media, that cornerstone of our democracy. So, you’re right, it’s not about me and whether you like my politics or not. You can push all that aside, and just pay attention to what that message is in this documentary, and that is that things have got to change for the better in the state of journalism. Otherwise, you know, it could be part of a demise of our democracy if that cornerstone erodes."

h/t: Ed Morrissey

Update: The full Bob and Mark interview with Bristol and Sarah Palin is here.

- JP

'Oh wow. They really mangled you up, didn't they?'

Just as he said he would do, John went to USC, where Katie Couric was being presented with the Walter Cronkite journalism award for her interview of Sarah Palin. He intended to also give away copies of his film.

But watch what happened to him when he tried.

Update: He talked about it on Greta's show tonight.

- JP

Sarah Palin: The Liberals' Nightmare

FrontPage magazine has interviewed John Ziegler, the former talk radio host who directed Blocking 'The Path to 9/11’. His new documentary film is Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted.

Here are the excerpts where Sarah Palin was discussed:

FP: What threat did Palin pose to the Obama campaign and why did the media treat her so viciously?

Ziegler: Obviously the only time McCain took a real lead was after Palin's convention speech. She represented the worst nightmare for liberals because she had been able to reach national prominence without already having been discredited by the news media.

The media lost their ability to decide for America whether she was acceptable or not. She had been able to go over their heads and that proved that the initial attempt to destroy her had backfired. This is part of the reason the media needed to bring out the big guns to destroy her. Again, the examples are too plentiful to get into here, but it was more a death by a thousand cuts, most of which were illegitimate with the public's belief in one myth making it easier for them to believe the next one. You have to watch the film to see it for yourself.

FP: Why was the feminist Left so silent in witnessing the media treating a woman so badly?

Ziegler: It seems pretty obvious that it was because she was obviously very pro-life and someone who actually lived that belief. But I think it went further than that. I think the fact that she was a very successful career woman, with five children, who still clearly loves her husband, who kills her own food and who looks amazing doing all of it, is a very threatening package for a lot of women. Unfortunately, Sarah Palin makes a lot of women feel badly about themselves.

FP: What has been the reception to this film? Has the media recognized its arguments, let alone existence?

Ziegler: The answer to that is complex. The reaction of audiences has been amazing. We often get standing ovations when it is screened and the e-mail I get from people who have purchased the DVD is overwhelmingly positive. As for the media, I have been on The View and The Today Show among many other shows, so it is hard to say they have ignored the film, but some elements (particularly the written press) of the media have pretty much done so -- at least so far. Interestingly there has not been even ONE allegation of me getting a fact wrong or even of a distortion. The best one liberal critic could come up with was basically that I didn’t have video of Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson mapping out their plan to get Palin. I figured that pretty much meant I had nailed it.

Read the full interview here. You can order your own copy of Media Malpractice on DVD here.

- JP