the kicker

Palin: Get Back to The Five W’s, People

November 13, 2008

Here, an interesting exchange between Larry King and Gov. Sarah Palin last night (one of her two CNN interviews yesterday):

KING: Should you have not done the Katie Couric interview?

PALIN: Sure, I should have done the Katie Couric interview. Her questions were fair…..I wish there would have been perhaps more dilution in terms of that interview being one of many, many. I wish I could have done more interviews along the trail, and in hindsight, I wish I would have had more opportunities or we would have seized more opportunities to talk to the American people through the media.

KING: Why didn’t you?

PALIN: I didn’t call the shots on a lot of that strategy…

…I would have greater respect for the mainstream media if we could have greater assurance that there’s fairness, objectivity through the reporting world. If there’s anything I can do in terms of assisting there and allowing the credence and credibility of that great vocation, that cornerstone of our democracy called the press, if I could help build up the credibility in the press and allow the electorate to know they can believe anything that is reported in the airwaves and in print, I want to help. I started out as a journalist. It’s important to me that that cornerstone of our democracy is given the credence and credibility it desrves.

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But we have to have a two-way street. We have to get back to the who, what, when, where, and why and allow the listeners and readers to make up their own minds and not so much commentary being involved in mainstream media’s questioning and reporting on candidates. I would like to kind of help build back that credibility in that cornerstone of our democracy, the media, allowing for the checks and balances that the government needs.

KING: Don’t you think, Governor Palin, there’s also a right wing media?

PALIN: There’s a right wing, a left wing, I tend to believe that we need to get back to the who, what, when, where, and why, and allow the electorate, allow listeners, viewers, to make up their own minds based on fair, objective, non-biased reporting. That’s what I’d like to see. At the same time, it’s healthy, interesting, entertaining to hear the commentary on both sides. When mainstream media, especially, is expected to be non-biased without the commentary being involved, I think we really need to get back to giving some credence to the wisdom of the people, allowing them the ability to make up their own minds without hearing too much commentary infiltrated in the questions and reporting.

KING:: But you do think you should have done more [interviews]?

PALIN: I would have loved to have done more, yes. yes.

Palin said as much — much more briefly — in her other CNN interview of yesterday, with Wolf Blitzer.

Blitzer asked Palin what she might, with hindsight, have done differently during the campaign:

PALIN: I just wish there had been more hours in the day, and been able to speak more to the American people through the media….

BLITZER: We tried. God knows, we tried…

PALIN: Sorry. That’s why we’re here today, Wolf…

Palin’s on a “speed date with history?” An “image redemption tour?” Maybe it’s The Make-It-Up-To-The-Media Tour: Sarah’s Sorry (How Can She Help?).

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.