Pop quiz: Let’s say you need to undergo a coronary bypass. And let’s say you learn, through a Google search from your hospital bed–thank goodness for your BlackBerry!–that the doctor the hospital has assigned to your surgery took six years, rather than the normal four, to complete med school. And that she obtained her M.D. only after attending five different medical programs at five different universities.
Would you:
(A) Request another doctor
(B) Decide to take your chances with Dr. McFlighty
I, for one, would choose (A). Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone?
Which is a long way of saying that Sarah Palin, given her educational history, probably shouldn’t be framing herself as some kind of expert on journalistic ethics.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.