Palin gives TIME a few minutes of her time about its false 'reporting'

-By Warner Todd Huston
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[Note: JP covered this briefly the other day, but I’ve added some context to the story so I thought it would be worth adding here]

The media is so sure that only the worst about Palin could possibly be true that false stories, out right lies, and even comedy bits are constantly presented as actual news. TIME Magazine is the latest to fall into that trap by reporting a satirical Internet posting about Sarah Palin as hard news. It all just goes to prove that Sarah Palin lives in the heads of the Old Media and it must be awfully cramped up there.

Last week on TIME Mag's Celebrity Newsfeed, Nick Carbone reported satire as fact only to make a "correction" days later. Carbone had fallen for a "tongue-in-cheek" Internet posting that joked that in an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity Palin said she wanted to deport Christina Aguilera for screwing up the National Anthem at the opening of the Superbowl.

TIME's Carbone was outraged by this. He snakily wrote, "And you thought Sarah Palin went overboard by commenting that she wanted to deport the singer?" Aside from the fact that you should never start a paragraph off with the word "and" (I know, I've made that mistake myself and been slapped for it, but he's supposed to be a pro), the report that Carbone linked to was a piece of satire. Yet Carbone never double checked the source because he was so sure that it was true. Sadly for his skills as a reporter, the piece he was so sure was true was clearly marked as residing in the "comedy" section.

After TIME regurgitated satire as fact, Governor Palin took the time to send a friendly note to the struggling magazine to help them with their fact checking.

Subject: Great job, MSM!

Jay - pls tell your bosses there at Time Magazine thank you for the invitations to attend the upcoming functions. I'll sure put a lot of thought into those invitations.

Then, have your editors retract Time's most recent ridiculous lies about me supposedly giving Sean Hannity a radio interview wherein I supposedly talked about Christina Aguilera (that I slammed her for her Nat'l Anthem mistake, and called for her deportation, etc). You guys were fooled into running a fake story that even US Weekly pulled and apologized for their blunder. Total lies - and you guys (once again) even put quotation marks around things I have never uttered. Then, Time needs to run an apology to Christina along with the retraction. (Add Hannity in your apology, too...those good folks don't deserve to be in a caustic, untrue story about me.) Thanks much - keep up the great work, Time Magazine.

Apparently TIME hasn't the time for fact checking.

This fits with so much of the "news" about Palin that has been disgorged by the media over the years. Not but two weeks ago, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was also taken in by a statical piece about Palin. Early in February, Maddow breathlessly reported that Palin wanted to send the U.S. military to strike Egypt at its time of turmoil. When she finally discovered that the report was a joke and she was fooled by satire did she apologize? Sort of, but even as she apologized she quixotically blamed it all on Glenn Beck.

The Old Media has been presenting lies and calumny about Palin as fact for quite some time, now. We have but to go back to when Palin was chosen as McCain's VP nominee. Remember the false story that Palin banned books when she became the Mayor of Wasilla? During that 2008 campaign the media reported a long list of books that she supposedly banned. Turns out that list was not a list that had any connection at all to Sarah Palin as it was a list of books that had been banned over the last 100 years. This list should have been easy for the Old Media to discount because some of the books on the list had yet to be published when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla. Yet the media falsely reported this as Palin's book banning list regardless.

You'll see at this link a whole lot of stories during the 2008 campaign that the media reported as fact without bothering to check to see if they were true or not.

The sad fact is that the Old Media is so sure that Sarah Palin is the worst evil since Hitler that they'll believe anything negative about her that they see. No need to check the fact. If it's bad it simply must be true.

-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.

Gov. Palin to TIME Mag: Retract your lies and apologize

"Great job, MSM... Keep up the great work"
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Sarah Palin sent a blistering email to TIME Magazine's Jay Newton-Small, in which the governor demands that the magazine not only retract the "total lies" that it published about her, but also apologize to Sean Hannity and Christina Aguilera. Both were mentioned in the bogus story, a satirical piece that both TIME and Us Weekly ran, apparently without bothering to first investigate. The text of the email, via Fox Nation:

"Subject: Great job, MSM!

Jay - pls tell your bosses there at Time Magazine thank you for the invitations to attend the upcoming functions. I'll sure put a lot of thought into those invitations.

Then, have your editors retract Time's most recent ridiculous lies about me supposedly giving Sean Hannity a radio interview wherein I supposedly talked about Christina Aguilera (that I slammed her for her Nat'l Anthem mistake, and called for her deportation, etc). You guys were fooled into running a fake story that even US Weekly pulled and apologized for their blunder. Total lies - and you guys (once again) even put quotation marks around things I have never uttered. Then, Time needs to run an apology to Christina along with the retraction. (Add Hannity in your apology, too...those good folks don't deserve to be in a caustic, untrue story about me.) Thanks much - keep up the great work, Time Magazine."

h/t: Free Republic

Update: Newton-Small was not the author of the article Gov. Palin was referencing, but merely someone at TIME Gov. Palin knows well enough to address as a contact person.

- JP

Jay Newton-Small: Sarah Palin Is Winning

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Jay Newton-Small reminds TIME readers that in the aftermath of her resignation just a little over a year ago, the elites on both the left and right had written off Sarah Palin:

What a difference a year makes.

Palin is now more popular nationally, more in demand by conservative groups as a speaker and far richer than she's ever been. She has earned an estimated $9 million by talking and writing — her first book ended up being a best seller, thank you very much — and she has inked a reported $1 million annual contract with Fox News. Oh, and she's become the most important independent endorser in a generation: her 16-11 win-loss record in the recent GOP primaries gives her a lot of political chits to call in if — just to suppose — she were to weigh a presidential run.

This fall, as Palin looks out over Lake Lucille, she has just wrapped a reality show about Alaska (pocketing $2 million for the effort), she is penning a second book, and her every tweet is devoured by the same media that often scorn her. How, exactly, did this happen? How did Palin, with no official platform and winning little more than disdain from the GOP establishment — and contempt from the Obama-friendly media — make such a comeback? After all, she isn't just proving herself to the snobs in Washington; she's leading an insurgency against them. And she's winning.

What many of these elites fail to realize is that Gov. Palin is doing many of the things she's done throughout her entire politic career, not the least of which is fighting corruption:

"Everyone thought her political career was dead when she resigned the [oil and gas] commission," recalls Gregg Erickson, founding editor of the Alaska Budget Report, which tracks politics in the capital of Juneau. "But she won not only on her charisma but the solid credentials of having stood up successfully to the corrupt power structure in Alaska." He senses echoes of that past today. "There certainly seem to be parallels with what she's doing now."

[...]

After flirting with Washington, she retreated to Alaska and became more involved with, and [became] a de facto leader of, the Tea Party movement. There is a synergy between the Tea Party and Palin that has inflated each side, accelerated by the evolving 24-7 news cycle that has covered each nonstop.

She has backed a number of candidates [Newton small get the numbers wrong] including several with Tea Party support:

While many — Alaska's Joe Miller, Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul in Kentucky, among them — were originally deemed outside the mainstream, Palin has helped change that river's course. All three won their GOP primaries against more moderate candidates.

[...]

Washington pundits are already scoffing at the idea of a Palin candidacy, especially at the notion that her GOP giant-killing makes her the one to beat. Palin's "the front runner?" asked the New York Times' Douthat last weekend. "That's bunkum." But if she has proven anything this year, it's her ability to surprise — and beat expectations.

The full Newton-Small TIME article is here.

- JP

How Sarah Plalin makes her endorsement decisions.

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Jay Newton-Small of TIME magazine asked Sarah Palin Tuesday how she makes her endorsement decisions. The governor explained:

"Often times I'm looking at the candidate who shares the circumstances in which I've been: underfunded, up against the machine, no big endorsements, running a grassroots campaign with the help of volunteer friends and family. When I see that, and can feel the momentum they can create with their passion in spite of greater challenges than their more comfortable opponents have, then I empathize, I relate, and I want to help."

"I always ask myself if it seems the candidate understands the importance of protecting our Constitution, first, of course. And if they have a record of, or at least articulate plans for, fighting for freedom, both economically and militarily. I inherently root for the underdog, and I end up going with my gut."

The TIME article does contain a few inaccuracies. Newton-Small, for example, wrote that the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate has endorsed Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. While her political action committee, SarahPAC, has contributed to the campaigns of the three, Sarah Palin has never formally endorsed them. A campaign contribution is not the same thing as a specific candidate endorsement.

- JP

Stacy Drake: Leftist TIME Mag Promotes Anti-Palin Facebook Hate Group

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A disturbing report from Stacy Drake at A Time For Choosing about some very disturbed leftist kooks:

On Monday, Time “NewsFeed” online edition published a piece by Kayla Webley called “Facebook Group: Plug the BP Oil Spill with Sarah Palin.” Karen Allen wrote a piece that details many of the disgusting comments left by the rabid members of the group, here.

[...]

As it turns out the author of the piece, Kayla Webley, has also been a writer for… you guessed it, The Huffington Post. She also just so happens to be based out of…. you guessed it, Chicago. Now, this could be some sort of coincidence but I think at the very least, Kayla has a bit of left-wing slant to her. Just a little bit, perhaps? How did she even come up with the idea to cover this group? Maybe trolling the anti-Palin spread on the lefty side of Facebook one night? Could it have been that she thought the group was funny and clever, considering the fact that Governor Palin seems to have really hit the nerve of these guilt-ridden, energy abusing, left-wing degenerates, with her message about the oil leak in the Gulf?

Read Stacy's commentary in full here.

- JP

TIME Magazine gives Sarah Palin a fair shake

When Gov. Sarah Palin announced on July 3 that she would resign her office later this month, TIME was there to cover it. The news magazine was granted one of seven interviews, four of which went to electronic media (ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox News) and one each to three print media outlets - newspaper (ADN), wire service (AP) and weekly news magazine (Links here).

For the most part, TIME's coverage of the Palin resignation is surprisingly balanced. It includes the interview, a podcast of same, an article by Nancy Gibbs, another piece which speculates on her future and a number of links to Palin items previously published by the magazine, including photo galleries, articles, backgrounders, analysis, speculation and sidebar stuff. There are a couple of flies in the ointment, both of which are linked speculative pieces on the "possible" reasons behind the governor's decision to resign. But overall, TIME's coverage is much more even-handed than we would have expected from the magazine.

The interview is the pick of the litter. Here are some of the better Sarah Palin quotes:

"We win the lawsuits, we win the ethics charges, we win all that — but it comes at such great cost. The distraction, the waste of time and money, the public's time and money — it's insane to continue down this road."

"We have sat down with reporters, showed them proof of the frivolity, the wastefulness — you know, millions of dollars this is costing our state to fight frivolous charges. And countless, countless hours from my staff, our department of law, from me every single day just trying to set the record straight. And it doesn't cost the adversaries a dime in this game."

"But the circumstances have changed, where we have seen this allowance of critics who lie, who stymie progress and who try to paralyze an administration. That hurts a state. That's not fair to the people of the state."

"My intention is to go out and to campaign for people who can effect change all across our nation. I can't do that from the governor's desk no matter how careful I were to be, because we've got lots of double standards hitting us. Other governors probably could travel around and campaign for others and speak candidly, using their First Amendment rights to express what they feel about a person, a candidate, a position. I get hit with ethics-violation charges if I do that."

"President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it's immoral and it's uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America."

"His cap-and-trade agenda is a cap-and-tax agenda, and it's going to drive the cost of consumer goods and the cost of energy so extremely high that our nation is going to start exporting even more jobs to China and to other countries..."

"If we're not allowed to drill and develop those conventional sources in this transition period between now and when we can rely more on alternative sources, we're going to become more and more reliant on foreign sources of energy and importing more and more goods because they're going to be cheaper over there to produce, and our country is going to be in a world of hurt."

"President Obama, how are you going to pay for this $1 [trillion] or $2 [trillion] or $3 trillion health-care plan? How are you going to pay off the stimulus package, those borrowed dollars? How are you going to pay for so many things that you are proposing and you are implementing? Americans deserve to know what the plan is to fund these things, health care included."

- JP