Will someone please tell Sarah Palin to go away? Her fifteen minutes are over.
According to a new interview, Sarah Palin claims that the media had some sort of vendetta against her during this most recent presidential campaign. She feels that their coverage and depiction of her was unfair and should not have been tolerated, likening the news media to a branch of government.
At the risk of being written off as a liberal elitist for not siding with everyone's favorite hockey mom, I beg to differ.
Sarah Palin's assertion is that the "unbalanced coverage" somehow threatens democracy. I balk at this suggestion. I would argue that the freedom of the media to say what they wish is essential to democracy. Sarah Palin was the worst offender in tarnishing her own reputation- the majority of the media merely presented her as she was. She made an absolute spectacle of herself at every opportunity. In order to have balanced coverage of her, half of the media would have had to grossly misrepresent events as they occurred. A true threat to democracy is the implication that the media should have been somehow prevented from disseminating factual information.
She alludes to the harm the media caused children- one can only assume that she refers here to her own family and the media's coverage of them. I do agree that close coverage of a candidate's children is intrusive, unnecessary, and irrelevant. I do not feel that this is necessarily a reflection of the media's disdain for Governor Palin, nor is it indicative of a liberal bias in the media. No one accused the media of a liberal bias when unkind remarks regarding Chelsea Clinton's physical appearance were published and openly discussed on talk shows across America. Nor in the case of the media coverage of the shenanigans involving Al Gore's son just prior to the primary campaign season.
What I find more disturbing than her characterization of the media at large as a big, left-wing bully is that she seems to be under the impression that the media is a branch of government. As someone who learned the three branches of government back in elementary school along with the alphabet and the concept of the food chain, I'm concerned that Governor Palin is a few cards short of a full deck here. It is irrefutable that the media has a great deal of influence: American citizens rely on various news outlets for information. Said citizens (hopefully) use this information to make educated decisions when forming stances on political issues, candidates, and voting. While the media has control over what information reaches the general public and in what light it is presented, it cannot do anything beyond that point.
The government, limited by each of the THREE branches' checks and balances on the others, can act. The government can implement legislation to cause actual change, though it is notorious for taking its sweet time in doing so. The distinct difference here is that the media has influence, and government has power. Influence and power are NOT one and the same.
Sarah Palin is giving the media far more credit than it is due. While the majority of the mainstream media (FOX News excluded) let Palin be seen for the bumbling mess that she was, the media coverage of the campaign is not what lost the election for Republicans. They presented what there was to be seen- but they did not tell Americans what to do with that information. Even if they had, the media has no power to control what individual Americans do with that information.
News outlets are privately owned and operated. Where the media is commercially motivated, it is wrong to identify them as part of the American government system. The government is supposedly for the people, by the people. The media is for the people, by the media outlet owners and the interests of their sponsors. While the media can (if they so choose) hold politicians accountable, they cannot implement actual change that affects the lives of all Americans as the government does. Bottom line: The media is not government.
This is fourth grade social science, people. I know we're dealing with Sarah Palin here, but come on!
