Pressuring the press

What is great for America is not only being able to answer tough questions but to stand up for what you believe. The first casuatly of being attacked is the truth.

Great article on the Palin administration charging ridiculous amounts of money to get access to what-are-supposed-to-be open records:

Want Palin's e-mails? That'll be $15 million

Did you forget to say the Jody Seitz is a full fledged democrat and was inappropriately using her position at KDLG?

http://www.jmigolf.com/pics/2005/ How many faces do YOU recognize ?

is anything but. I was amazed that the so called truth squad was again giving press releases about state matters. The state personnel board should speak for themselves they do not need the Palin campaign to assist them. It would be nice if the Alaska press would take them to task for this and be asking why are you doing a release on these subjects that should come from a state agency or the ag's office. Come on Alaska press quit buying into this nonsense, many of us in this state (and I'm sure outside the state) are outraged at the tactics being used in these phony press releases.

A long time ago we discovered the inherent bias of channel 2 reporting and began watching channel 11's news almost exclusively. Except for the scam "7 day forecast", channel 11 has done a pretty good job of real reporting. When the Palin controversies began to erupt, we TiVo'd both news programs, then compared reporting. Often, channel 2 would completely ignore new events and updates that may reflect negatively on Palin. We were shocked that certain parts of stories integral to any sense of accuracy were omitted, and on at least two occasions, flabberghasted to realize that channel 2 didn't even bother with fairly important updates. We will be repeating this TiVo exercise just to see if MacDonald plans on instituting actual reporting, and suggest that others do the same eye-opening comparison. Oh, and by the way, for all you media personnel out there: the Stevens trial is regarding a "reporting" charge, not a "corruption" charge. He is charged with failing to file accurate reports, not with corruption. Factual news reporting on the trial would not repeatedly utilize an innacurate descriptive phrase, in itself a reflection of bias. It's kind of the same thing as describing an oil and gas corporation with less than 6% of the world's oil supply "Oil Giant BP" or "Big Oil Corporation Conoco".

Wow, listening to Steve McDonald defend his station's coverage is like listening to a guilty kid trying to explain away why the chores weren't completed. I totally understand his attempt, and some of what he is saying is genuine. But, I heard a disrespect for our other information sources such as blogs - many of which have references and links as well as pieces that are written from respectable people who are truly interested in getting the information out there. He is getting way too caught up in trying to defend his station and reporting. There is a paradigm change and I believe it has to do with how we find out WTF is going on in our world.

And at the very end of the NRO rape kit article is this interesting note: From the beginning, the story didn’t seem to add up. Nothing in Sarah Palin’s background suggested a callousness to rape victims; it seemed particularly unlikely that a female mayor would support such a bad policy. Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella told USA Today in an e-mail that the governor “does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test.” In recent days, some conservative bloggers have noted the strange coincidence of the same anti-Palin smears showing up on liberal blogs at the same time, suggesting some sort of coordination — and have wondered if it reflected the work of a p.r. firm connected to Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. On Monday, a p.r. executive who has worked with Democratic campaigns in the past admitted he had created videos that included false charges against Palin, but claimed the Obama campaign had no official or unofficial role in the creation of the video. Whomever they are, those who spread the lie that Wasilla alone had the rape-kit policy, and the Obama campaign itself, owe Palin an apology.

Continued thanks to you Andrew for exposing this to the media. Greatly appreciated. Mary Archer

The Alaska press should be ashamed for the shabby job they've done. In the weeks since Palin got nominated, they have worked so hard to prove "they belong", that they don't have a hometown bias that they have completely forgotten to do their job. For example, a particularly vicious story has been repeated for weeks now and no one in this state has taken 5 seconds to look at it. Sarah Palin has been accused of charging victims for their rape evidence kits while she was mayor and such luminaries as Tony Knowles and Eric Croft suddenly remembered in great detail how she "should have known" such a practice was happening. Nobody here investigated at all - but one journalist from the Lower 48 did. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODA1YWM5ZjM2ZTU5ODliZTY2NTczMGUwZWYwNTVlMTQ=&w=MA== Liberal bloggers have cited the story of Wasilla charging victims for rape kits as evidence that as mayor, Sarah Palin backed cruel and insensitive policies. But just about everything we know from initial accounts of this controversy is wrong. When the practice came to light, the state passed a law banning it, and the minutes from the state-legislature committees reveal several missing details. Among them:

It didn't surprise me to see that the Palin's tried to get a journalist fired from her job with KDLG. It sounds like some kids grew up a little spoiled and they don't like dealing with things as adults. I had a conversation with my sister and come to find out that none of this bullying, lying and deceit matters to her. She is voting for McCain because Sarah is anti-abortion. My response to her is that it would take a near miracle to get the laws changed, why take a chance with someone who is as dishonest as Palin to lead our government?

* against Palin and her staff for doing what she accused Randy Ruedrich of- using state resources to conduct party business. When the press releases are written by Palin's staff and then issued by the McCain campaign, what more evidence do you need? *against Colber, other DOL employees, and Van Flein with the bar association? First Colberg conducts an "investigation," then he says he has a conflict and has the state hire Van Flein, and now they are both working with and for the McCain campaign. What happened to Colberg's conflict?

www.audacityofdeceit.com book by Brad Oleary - a must read for any and all voters There a scary things afoot than the Palins

As the old saying goes, "the pen is mightier than the sword". Given the increase of electronic media, and the corresponding diminution of the gullible public's cognitive skills, it is indeed a savy approach to manipulate the press. It has been the Palin tactic to woo the press, thus converting them into a cheer leading squad that disregards the facts. The journalists that have ingnored the Sarah Siren are quickly marginalized, ostrasized, bad mouthed and eventually fired. When the truth can only be obtained in the blogosphere the public should be appalled at this insulting affront to the freedom of speech.

Doesn't public critique come with the territory? Everyone knows you can't please everyone all the time, right? And in a public, elected office it's a given that criticisms will be public, correct? That the press performs a valuable service by keeping citizens informed of both the good and the bad, ja? So if Mr. and Mrs. P can't handle the criticism - what the blazes are they doing in politics?! If SP can't handle questions from her own countrymen, how the devil can we expect her to handle meetings with leaders of adversarial countries?! And if TP can't handle critiques of his wife on a local level, then what kind of behavior can we expect from him when his wife is criticized nationally and abroad? This must just be driving him crazy!

For good reporting in Alaska for years. We can only hope that there can continue to be a divide kept between friendship and doing ones job in local jouralism. Bob Woodward from ABC and the much missed David Bloom from NBC were best of friends but it never interfered in their stellar reporting for their respective news channels. You are beginning to see the cracks in the news staff at channel 2 and it isn't pretty. I would hope that reporters like Mike & Jason are supported by KTUU management to continue to ask the hard questions that their former fellow reporters couldn't or wouldn't.

KTUU has long had the most insipid of the newscasts around. While their talking heads are arguably the most articulate of the three local channels, they would clearly give more time to a birth of a litter of cute puppies than a national disaster. With respect to your point, one need only listen to Steve McDonald on Alaska News Nightly on public TV/radio. Despite being the news director of the largest news organization in Palin's state, it took him until this week to finally admit that maybe, just maybe, she once told a little, bitty "non-quite-truth". He alone in the western world thought she did fine in the interview with Gibson. KTUU and ADN have repeatedly been scooped by the New York Times, LA Times and others on recent Alaska political news despite the fact that the local guys should be the experts. Most folks have long since come to the realization that we'll have to depend on Outside sources to get any real reporting in this state.

I'm in Seattle and will soak up some sunshine following yesterday's big 'Hawks win over the Cardinals. My wife and I are going to go to a flooring store to get some ideas - we've spent weeks in Lowes, HD and SBS to say nothing of the tile places. We need some new ideas. Anyway, a quick question for the class: If French's investigation was valid, if he had the legal authority to subpoena folks and call witnesses......why are the Palin folks ignoring these subpoenas? Why isn't French going before the closest judge and obtaining an order compelling Todd and the rest to appear?