Greta and Sarah: BFFs

(Photo from Fox News Channel)

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren had beef with this portion Howard Kurtz’s Nov. 13th column for The Washington Post about her latest interview with Sarah Palin.

[Balitomore Sun TV Critic David] Zurawik calls the Van Susteren interview "beyond friendly," saying: "Greta Van Susteren is totally sympathetic to her and makes no secret about it."

In the blog post (which was removed shortly after it was posted, here is a screenshot), Greta complains that Kurtz didn’t give her the opportunity to defend herself against Zurakwik’s criticism, even though Kurtz had called her about another topic the day before. Fox News’ mantra “fair and balanced” must be going to her head. Kurtz is under no obligation to provide all sides of every single assertion in a column and should feel free to quote a prominent TV critic without the journalists reference complaining. 

If his column had been specifically about Fox News’ treatment of Palin, then she would have had a point. Kurtz doesn’t give her a chance to respond to 64 words at the tail end of a 1,000 word piece and Greta feels betrayed!? That’s ridiculous. It’s no surprise she took the blog post down, realizing she’d made a mountain out of a molehill.

Zurawik’s characterization of Van Susteren’s interviews as sympathetic is self evident to anyone who has seen any of them. In her latest interview, Van Susteren spent the first half of the interview letting Palin address rumors about her $150,000 wardrobe and whether or not she insisted Africa was a country. The interview is so pedestrian and accommodating in these ten minutes that Palin herself looked bored. In Susteren’s previous interview with Palin shortly after her nomination, she played to Palin’s strong suit asking her about sports and Title IX, hardly relevant for someone who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency.

In the rest of her blog post Susteren goes on to defend her treatment of Palin, insisting that “you can get a lot of information out of guests by being polite” and that sympathetic does not equal ineffective. But it does equal useless.

When she’s asked general and open ended questions, Palin never has to venture far from her comfort zone. Anyone can speak generally about anything. Palin needs to be driven off her talking points so she can prove to American that she actually understands the issues and has the ability to think critically about them before there’s any talk of 2012.

Greta Van Susteren’s interviews are like meet and greets when they should be obstacle courses.

Fake expert leaves reporters feeling shameful and looking biased.

Photo of phony McCain adviser Martin Eisenstadt.
Courtesy of Eisenstadtgroup.com


As the post-election hype rolls on, the Palin-coverage took a twisted turn, which left viewers scratching their heads.

According to NYT, a pair of filmmakers pulled an elaborate Internet hoax by impersonating a McCain adviser.

When Fox News reported that an unnamed McCain adviser said Palin did not know that Africa was a continent, no one thought to ask the defendant whether or not the fact was true. Instead, the anonymous source's Palin/Africa story spread like rapid fire. Well, because, on top of her infinite foreign policy widsom, it was another Palin-fumble, right? Soon after, MSNBC anchor David Shuster reported Monday that it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who leaked the claims.

The only problem is, Eisenstadt is a made-up character.

Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin admitted to creating created Eisenstadt and convincing blogs to pitch a TV show based on the character.

Shamefully, MSNBC reported a retraction, saying, "Eisenstadt should not have made air." But also, they claimed, "someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out."

Had exposing everything negative about Palin become so routine that no one remembered to fact check their sources? You would think after the Stephen Glass fiasco, reporters would be more careful...


But while right-wing supporters pointed the finger at a liberal-biased media who was too "anxious to report any negative reports on Sarah Palin without first confirming the information (Michael Calderone's Politico blog), Howard Rosenberg argues otherwise in his article.

With the 24-hour news cycle they (today’s media) rush into anything they can find,” Mirvish told The New York Times. (NoTimetoThink.com)

Rather than accuse MSNBC for possessing a liberal slant, Rosenberg says, "it was rushed on the air because MNBC–as do so many in the media these days–was moving Too Fast to Think."

But my problem , however, is how easily we were dooped by bloggers, who got an even bigger voice through careless news broadcasters. Should we consider Gorlin and Morvish abusers of the Internet for its impacts and benefits of an open forum? Or have they just opened the media's eyes (big media, like Fox News and MSNBC, for that matter) to rely less on the Internet for sources and more on reporting, next time?

Palin vs. Palin

The two faces of Sarah Palin in the media
Photo courtesy of CTV

Thursday’s vice presidential debate seemed to be Palin vs. Palin. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times and Tom Shales of the Washington Post were in agreement that Palin’s opponent was more her image in the media than Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Who. It was Palin of the Katie Couric - Tina Fey fame vs. confident and feisty soccer mom. According to Jane Kim of the Columbia Journalism Review, “the debate was about media representation, billed as self-representation.” With Palin it’s more about the image and less about the issues. In fact she made it exceedingly clear that she would not be answering the moderator’s questions until she had completed her talking points. And who came blame her. Her image in the media is so tarnished (for good reason, some may say) her biggest battle was in fact against the “other” Sarah Palin. On the other hand, she had managed to lower media expectations to a point where David Brooks of the New York Times may be justified in claiming “few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.” Few could have indeed. Evan Cornog of the Columbia Journalism review, says it in all his eloquence : "Palin’s abysmal performance in recent press interviews, particularly her talks with Katie Couric of CBS, had lowered expectations so far that anything short of rotating her head 360 degrees and vomiting green slime while masturbating with a crucifix would have counted as a victory." (Reference to the Exorcist)