The "Impartial" Media

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin interviewed with CNN's Drew Griffin this week and the subject of Biden's comments came up. Palin didn't hold any punches, asking, "Why does Joe Biden get a pass on such a thing? Can you imagine if I would have said such a thing?... I think that we would have been hounded and held accountable...[Y]ou guys would have clobbered me."

All Griffin could do was admit, "You're right." (Even Dan Rather conceded, "Certainly if Sarah Palin had said this it would be above the fold in most newspapers.")

Later in the interview, Griffin did try to clobber Palin, and he lied in order to do it. "The press has been pretty hard on you," he said. "The Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, 'I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above'."

Palin repeatedly pressed Griffin for a name—"Who wrote that one?" —but Griffin refused to supply it. The author, it turns out, is Byron York, a National Review contributor, but what he said was quite different from the way Griffin portrayed. York wrote, "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or—or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle." Clearly, this was not his opinion, but the media's portrayal of her.

This is what now passes as journalism?