Palin emails, media bias, and Monday morning quarterbacking

So I woke up this morning to find this article from the Guardian, which prompted a major gut check on my part:

Release of Sarah Palin emails angers US conservatives/Rightwingers accuse media of vendetta against possible Republican nominee and ask why Obama was not targeted too

Reading it, I felt myself starting to turn a corner on the whole media-biased-against-Palin argument.

Before today, I didn't give this issue any thought. I thought journalists were simply digging hard into someone whose political ambition far exceeded her level of competence, and who had a little dirt up her sleeve. Now I'm not so sure.

First, I do think the effort to secure Palin's emails as governor was important, and here's why.

Compared to previous major party vice presidential candidates, most voters knew nothing about Sarah Palin when John McCain plucked her out of obscurity. Of course, many voters didn't know much about Barack Obama, either. (I'll admit that. I knew he was a Democratic Senator who gave a great speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, but that's about it.) Yet Obama had far more political experience than Palin, who spent most of her political career serving a town of 6,000 people.

So no one knew Palin. Then stuff began surfacing about her that sounded illegal, unethical, or just plain wacky (i.e. Troopergate, using public funds for personal expenses, flip-flopping on the Bridge to Nowhere, shooting critters from the sky, banning books, using private emails for state business, etc.). So all things considered, the media had ample reason to dig in.

OK, but... What did they find? So far, not a whole lot. Nothing truly horrendous, at least, nor anything that Palin herself can't or won't effectively play down with folksy talk and half-truths. In fact the only major thing we've learned from all her emails is that she distrusts the media.

Of course she would, you say. But hers is not just the view of the average politician. More people every year feel the same.

In fact, most "mainstream" news sources in the U.S. – both newspapers and network and cable TV news – are facing trust issues. The number of Americans who have a favorable opinion of network TV news and major national papers have steadily eroded between 1985 and 2007, according to the Pew Research Center. Audience and readership numbers are falling, too.

The reasons may have been valid. But by going after Palin's emails and no one else's – and not just filing open records requests, but engaging attorneys, fighting for three years for the release of her emails, setting up special Twitter accounts to broadcast the findings, hiring additional reporters, and encouraging Americans to join in on the fun – well, that either means the news media has it in for Sarah Palin, or they just see her as a meal ticket. Either way, it seems biased.

And barring the discovery of something truly evil in her emails, the whole effort appears to be working in Palin’s favor by hardening her support base and making the news media look like Geraldo and The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults.

The other thing bugging me is my personal belief that Sarah Palin would make a horrible president. So did I secretly want her emails to contain some major nasties? Yeah. And I'm still waiting to see what's in the 2,000 or emails currently being withheld for “executive privilege." I don't think that's a fight that should be given up, either.

But as things stand, I don't think the news media is going to come out of this looking very good. Everyone's getting plenty of eyeballs on this story, sure. But I think it would done greater good to do the same digging into every presidential and vice-presidential candidate -- Obama, McCain and Biden. Expensive? Absolutely. Impractical? Probably. But not impossible. And such a strategy would have both dismantled the appearance of bias and increased the chances of finding something newsworthy about the three other candidates.

So how is the news media handling the criticism that they're biased toward Palin? Here's Mike Oreskes, AP’s senior managing editor for national news:

“Palin is one of many officeholders whose public record and leadership the AP has sought to illuminate by obtaining emails, memos and other documents … She's maintained a sizable profile in the current political scene and may run for president. We are pressing to obtain the records of other presidential contenders in the months ahead.”

Sounds a bit hollow to me. Um, where are Biden's emails? Plus Palin isn't even an officeholder anymore.

(Man, I better watch it. I'm going to start sounding like one of them.)

Anyway I think Charles Mahtesian, Politico's national politics editor, was a bit more frank on the issue in The New York Times:

“I think there’s some truth in what the critics on the right say about a double standard for Sarah Palin ... Having said that, she is an incredibly compelling character. And anything she says or does will have a bearing on the 2012 presidential election cycle. So it’s a pretty easy call as a news story.”

And there you have it, I suppose. The eyeballs win.