Thorough Palin Press Coverage is Needed NOW!

Thorough Palin press coverage is needed

You wouldn’t buy a house without first getting a home inspection.
You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive.
Yet some people would have you vote for president and vice president without a thorough vetting of all the candidates especially since we are facing extended wars on many fronts along with facing down many challenges facing our Veterans and our Veterans Administration.

When Sarah Palin accepted the Republican nomination for vice president, her ascension to the national stage was so unexpected that the initial media spotlight focused on her resume alone — including her personal life. Indeed, her role as a parent was cited by Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, as something that would make her a good vice president.

Stories quickly followed on her brief tenure as a governor and on her record as a part-time mayor.

Yet as soon as national reporters began introducing Gov. Palin to the American people, the uproar began: The press is out to destroy her. What’s more, the critics charged, there is a liberal conspiracy to discredit a conservative woman.

Hogwash.

The press is showing America who Sarah Palin is, how she has governed a state and a city, and how she has navigated the delicate relationships with lobbyists and special interests that all political leaders must traverse. Her past affiliations are reported to help people understand her beliefs.

You need to know as much about Sarah Palin as you know about Sens. Joe Biden, Barack Obama and John McCain. There is little mystery left when it comes to their records, backgrounds, policies, plans or temperament. And that’s a good thing for all voters.

By allowing herself to be thrust into the national campaign, Gov. Palin made the choice to subject herself to a level of scrutiny that is never experienced by private citizens or, for that matter, by local and state politicians.

But that scrutiny is essential. It is often said that the most important qualification of a vice president is the ability to serve as president. Sen. McCain would become the nation’s oldest president elected to a first term. He has a history of skin cancer. Without wishing him ill, the qualifications of his vice president are of vital national interest.

So while Gov. Palin is late to the national spotlight, she must undergo the same sorts of background reporting and grant the same sorts of probing interviews that have helped the public better understand the backgrounds, policies and personalities of McCain, Obama and Biden.

And no, the press should not accept at face value alone the background information offered by political handlers of either party. Republican and Democratic image-makers are just that. Their job is to present their candidates in as positive a light as possible.

It is the job of the press to fact-check as well as to distribute the image-makers’ portrayals of the candidates, and to develop through independent reporting their own portraits of the would-be presidents and vice presidents.

When Gov. Palin criticized the national media in her acceptance speech, many of you e-mailed me. A good number criticized The Tennessean and Tennessean.com for carrying stories that we in fact never published.

A number of news ombudsmen and others characterized Gov. Palin’s comments as a preemptive attack intended to make reporters and their editors and producers gun-shy as well as to to cast doubt on future reporting.

Whatever the reason, the words have failed to slow the reporting about the Republican candidate. Nor should they.

My advice is that you use as many different news sources as possible. If you tend to trust one particular cable TV channel, make sure you also follow the coverage on a channel you might mistrust. At the same time you read our coverage, check out stories from other newspapers and Web sites from across the country, as well. Look at the broad range of coverage.

Please make use of a specific feature on Tennessean.com that will make it easy for you to compare the candidates’ stands.

Here’s another suggestion: Take the same approach to reading campaign coverage in print and online and watching it on television as we do when we select stories. Look at the sources in the stories. Understand their backgrounds and be aware of whom they support and of policies they advocate. Do the sources have firsthand knowledge of the issues or are they merely repeating what others have said? Put more stock in stories that report two sides rather than one — stories that seek rebuttals to allegations. And trust stories with named sources more than stories with unnamed sources.

You’re smart. You can distinguish substance from fluff and meaning from rhetoric.

But please know that the national media need to cover each candidate aggressively. This is no vendetta. Our nation’s future depends on all of us making decisions based on the most information possible.