Inside Politics Weekend: Palin press

Enough with the Sarah bashing, already. Quell that schadenfreude. She’s not running right now.

But the news media continues to hit Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with negative coverage that overlooks her job performance in favor of all things personal. The Anchorage Daily News spotted New York Times reporter Bill Yardley around Juneau; some observers suggest the Times is planning a “hit job” on Mrs. Palin though she left the campaign trail five months ago.

McClatchey News, meanwhile, recently offered the headline “Those crazy Palins: Todd’s half sister indicted in break-ins.”

Warner Todd Huston, a media analyst at Newsbusters.com, questions the nation’s third-largest newspaper chain.

“Has McClatchy ever had any headlines like this: ‘Those Crazy Kennedys’? Or since we recently had Obama’s half brother denied a visa to England over his rape charges — not to mention his illegal immigrant aunt — how about a headline like this: ‘Those Crazy Obamas?’” Mr. Huston asks.

“Did we ever see a headline about ‘Those Crazy Clintons’ when we discovered all the financial misdeeds and drug busts of Hillary and Bill’s extended family? How about Carter? Did good ol’ Billy Carter ever cause McClatchy to say ‘Those Crazy Carters’?” he continues.

But Palin-bashing brings rewards, apparently. On Wednesday, CBS anchor Katie Couric received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism from the University of Southern California for the 2008 interview with Mrs. Palin that inspired unkind parodies of the governor on late night TV and elsewhere.

The name of the award? “Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign.” Filmmaker John Zeigler, who produced a documentary on Mrs. Palin’s unfair challenges in the media, is vexed.

“Its obvious Couric is being rewarded for the political result of her interview — the shooting down of a conservative superstar just in time to save the Obama campaign — and not the ‘journalism’ of it,” he observes.

Swine odor

The number of chummy earmarks in the 2009 appropriations bills have reached 10,160 — worth close to $20 billion, according to the watchdogs at Citizens Against Government Waste.

“Everyone in Washington has promised a new era of transparency and restraint in earmarks, from President Obama to the leaders of both parties in Congress,” said Tom Schatz, the group’s president. “Sadly, the hard numbers from the 2009 appropriations bills tell a different story. The current Democratic congressional majority is following the same trajectory as their Republican predecessors.”

The earmarks include $3.8 million for the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy in Detroit; $1.9 million for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut; $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Ames, Iowa; $380,000 for fairgrounds improvement in Kotzebue, Alaska, and $143,000 for the Greater New Haven Labor History Association in Connecticut.

See them all if you dare at the group’s Web site (www.cagw.org).

By the numbers

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