Big Media (BM) set themselves up for a huge disappointment recently with their panting anticipation of the sure ruin of Sarah Palin. They were certain 
that in the thousands of her newly released e-mails that somewhere, somehow Palin’s imagined incompetence and witlessness would be exposed.
The only thing exposed was BM’s ongoing bias against the lady from Alaska.
NBC News was so certain this was going to be a really big deal they sent one of BM’s biggest stars, co-host Matt Lauer, to cover the BREAKING NEWS LIVE FROM ALASKA! He set up his coverage with this line, “Plus, what could be a tough day for potential presidential candidate Sarah Palin. We’re live in Alaska, where thousands of her e-mails as governor there will be released today….”
Also over NBC airwaves viewers heard Ann Curry hope breathlessly, “Sarah Palin says that she’s still thinking about making a run for President, but she’s about to face a new political minefield today….”
Like many other BM reporters, Michael Isikoff was also hot on Palin’s trail. He reported, “Fresh off her bus tour that attracted a crush of media attention, Sarah Palin may now be facing a storm of a different kind: the release of thousands of e-mails from Palin to more than 50 top aides and officials in Alaska….”
If you can’t see their bias you are blind. Look at the words they used: “tough day”, “new political minefield” and “storm of a different kind.” Those words are loaded with bias and were delivered with an underlying contempt for the Governor.
BM’s disappointment was obvious when, after hours of reading endless stacks of e-mails, NBC’s Isikoff was forced to report, “The e-mails have lots of redactions, and so far, there are no bombshells….”
Then poor David Gregory must have felt horrible when NBC tasked him to report, “As Mike and his team are finding, not a lot of bombshells here….”
As the news story faded, BM reported unambiguously what they were looking for – bombshells. That’s why Lauer expected Palin to have a “tough day”, and why Ann Curry assumed Palin would face “a new political mine field”, and why Isikoff presumed she would be headed into a “storm.” They hoped Sarah Palin would have a “tough day” as she scampered through “a new political mine field” and suffered career ending damage from the “storm.”
It was a tough two or three days for BM. In the end the Palin e-mails revealed her to be a competent and levelheaded governor while the way the BM covered the story revealed its bias once again.
Not proof enough for you yet? Check out these quotes:
“You guys talk about her [Sarah Palin] a lot, we write about her a lot, yet if you talk to any single reporter at any media organization that we’re aware of, I don’t think that anyone thinks she can be President or should be President.” — The Politico’s executive editor Jim VandeHei, a former Washington Post political reporter, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, June 14.
NYTimes Editor Bill Keller
”If the 2012 election were held in the newsrooms of America and pitted Sarah Palin against Barack Obama, I doubt Palin would get 10 percent of the vote. However tempting the newsworthy havoc of a Palin presidency, I’m pretty sure most journalists would recoil in horror from the idea.” — New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a column for the paper’s June 19 Sunday Magazine.
Sarah Palin 2008 Convention speech:
“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.
I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.
When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles, because I knew those voters, and I knew their families too.
Before I became Governor of the great State of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer”……except that you have ACTUAL RESPONSIBILITIES!!!!!”
She was right. I, and more of us, should have listened.