Media Professionalism Tends To Be Abandoned When Governor Sarah Palin Is The Topic.

Whatever happened to the days when those in the media business took pride in their professionalism? Now I know, of late, that defining professionalism in the media business is to engage in a race to the lowest common denominator, but you'd think that a fellow like Walter Rodgers who has been in the game for over 30 years would still be trying to adhere to good standards of professionalism, but it seems that the days of writing an editorial where opinions are supported by evidence are now just a distant memory and instead we get editorials where opinions are supported by whim. I'd be ashamed to put this piece of "reasoning" out under my name, especially if mere bloggers can challenge the foundations of the piece.

Sarah Palin's political learning curve has to be steep if she hopes to be taken seriously as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

That's an interesting assumption considering that Governor Palin a.) was the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republicans, b.) was a successful Governor, c.) delivered notable accomplishments during her term of office, d.) galvanized the opposition to ObamaCare, e.) got the attention of two senior Democratic Party Senators when she wrote her editorial on Cap & Trade, f.) is a politician in demand for speaking engagements and endorsements, g.) has a greater ability to influence voters to make them more likely to vote (more likely 26%, less likely 35%) for a candidate when compared to President Obama (more likely 14%, less likely 37%) in a Blue State, and h.) has a proven capability to drive voter interest.

If a "professional" editorialist is going to base a column on the thesis that Governor Palin isn't a serious candidate, then the editorialist needs to discount all of the above points before he can create a thesis based on the received wisdom of the cocktail crowd he runs with. Rodgers, obviously hasn't done this, he's just listened to the self-referential pack he runs with and assumed that their subjective opinion is sufficient, just as with the Bush White House, to craft a new reality.

From that doozy of an opening paragraph, Rodgers launches into his next weakly substantiated point:

Last autumn she sought to shore up her foreign-policy credentials by pointing out that you can see Russia from land in Alaska. It would be well if she also learned the old Russian proverb, "If you want to run with the wolves, you have to learn to howl like a wolf."

Now it's quite obvious that Rodgers’ view of Governor Palin's statement has been influenced by the Tina Fey caricature of Governor Palin, in which Fey utters the line "I can see Russia from my house." The issue was never that the pretty vista of Russia on the horizon was sufficient in itself as evidence of exposure to foreign policy. Rather, the issue was that the proximity of Russia put the Governor of Alaska in a unique position, in that she was briefed by military officers on every occasion of Russian incursion into Alaskan air-space, as has been noted by CBS News:

In her role as Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has received briefings on Russian military plane incursions near Alaskan airspace, an Alaska National Guard spokesman confirms to CBS News.

Secondly, as Governor she was the Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard, but unlike other Governors, she had administrative control over the only National Guard battalion on permanent deployment, the 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard. This means that military officers in the Battalion had a dual chain of command that they were answerable to, tactical matters were addressed through the D.O.D. chain of command and administrative matters where addressed through the Alaska National Guard and this ultimately led to the desk of Governor Palin.

Thirdly, Governor Palin had interactions with foreign leaders, for instance, The Alaska National Guard has a training partnership with the Mongolian Armed Forces, and in 2007:

Mongolia’s president visited Alaska in 2007, bringing business leaders and other VIPs. Alaska and Mongolia train together. Alaskan medical teams have treated people in Mongolia. Mongolia has hosted bilateral exercises.

So, proximity to Russia does indeed result in foreign policy exposure, at the very least of a military nature, and this exposure combined with the geopolitical station of Alaska, means that foreign dignitaries will be interacting with the Governor of Alaska. The simple fact is that neighbors have more occasions to interact with each other than do non-neighbors. If Rodgers wanted to add value to his analysis he would expand on this truism instead of relying on the quick and dirty "understanding" that metastasized after Tina Fey refocused Governor Palin's statement.

The media's treatment of the former Alaska governor and her family has at times crossed a line, but Ms. Palin's whining about it doesn't help. She should accept that harsh portrayals go with being a celebrity.

Words and phrases have meaning, so when Rodgers writes "at times" he implies that the media has occasionally, but not commonly, crossed a line. While there certainly is room to debate where the line between occasional and common lies, most the public, as measured by opinion polls, have determined that the press treatment of Governor Palin has crossed the line quite frequently rather than on rare occasion. For Rodgers to minimize the degree of press malfeasance makes him complicit in the game of mischaracterizing Governor Palin. As for Rodgers' claim that Governor Palin is whining, he would do well to support that claim and differentiate her criticisms of the press from those engaged in by President Obama when the press focused their attention on his wife or daughters. If Rodgers is contending that Governor Palin had more occasion than other politicians to criticize the press then her criticism needs to be put in context with reference to the degree and kind of attacks directed at Governor Palin as compared to other politicians. If Rodgers would like to make a case that Governor Palin is too thin skinned for the game of politics and that other politicians bear up better under worse press treatment, most of which is directed at the politician's family members, then Rodgers should make that case. It would, I'm sure, be compelling reading. Otherwise, he'd do well to relearn the tenets of journalism, substantiate your points.

Rodgers then proceeds down a blind alley, an alley which adds nothing to his thesis that the Governor lacks seriousness:

Palin's education ought to begin with an honesty check. She needs to come to grips with the fact that she was not Republican nominee John McCain's first choice to be vice president.

So what? Whether a candidate is the first choice or not is immaterial. What counts is who is chosen. Senator Lieberman doesn't gain gravitas, stature or power by being the Republican Presidential candidate's first choice, rather, that gravitas, stature and power flows to the person who is chosen, Governor Palin. If Rodgers wants to make a case for why this "honesty check" is noteworthy for inclusion in the editorial, then he should make it, but to just release this random blurb and to let it hang in the air, doesn't advance the argument he contends he is arguing. Now keep that point in mind for later.

After spinning his wheels for a few paragraphs on the Senator Lieberman diversion, Rodgers trots out a fresh point:

Last autumn's campaign was a mere flirtation, given what may lie ahead for Palin if she decides to throw her hat in the ring. She must decide whether she wants to be a heavyweight public servant or a rock star. Republicans have a responsibility to decide not only if she can win, but also whether she has the gravitas to do the job.

Again Rodgers grabs the bit in his mouth and runs with the conventional wisdom. Was last autumn's campaign a mere flirtation? Historically, that's not an outlandish perspective. Vice-President Gore, as the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2000 was subjected to more scrutiny than in previous campaigns when he was his party's Vice-Presidential candidate. Is that the model of media coverage we saw play out in 2008? I contend that Governor Palin, after her Dayton introduction, and then over the course of the campaign, and since the end of the campaign, has been the most vetted candidate in American history. The media couldn't be bothered to investigate President Obama's shady connections in the world of Chicago machine politics, they were eager to avoid covering his dear friendship with Bill Ayers, they desperately wanted to wish away mention of Reverend Wright and even today, the mainstream media hasn't covered the Van Jones controversy, but after Governor Palin's introduction they sent teams of reporters up to Alaska to delve into the minutia of her political and family history, going so far as to look at the records of her time on Wasilla City Council. Does Rodgers honestly believe that the media was giving Governor Palin a pass in terms of in-depth and critical coverage as they usually do with Vice-Presidential candidates? Does Rodgers believe that the media fixation on Governor Palin after the election is the standard that is applied to every Vice-Presidential candidate from the losing ticket? For the sake of argument, if Governor Palin is nominated in 2012, could Rodgers explain to his readers where the press had given Governor Palin a free ride or the benefit of the doubt but would, after her nomination, start looking into her record and background in more depth. On what topics has the press been negligent and given Governor Palin the soft-glove treatment?

Rather than relying on conventional wisdom, and boring his more analytic and informed readers, Rodgers would have been better served if he informed his readers with original thinking, thinking that, perhaps, led to the point that Governor Palin is now the most vetted candidate for office in our nation's history and if no dirt has stuck thus far, then no dirt from her past is likely to arise which will disqualify her from higher office. As for the comparison of Governor Palin to a rock star, only a marginally informed hack would set up a false choice between rock star and heavy weight public servant. Governor Palin has earned her bona fides in the realm of public service. Of the four politicians running for high office in the last Presidential election, Governor Palin was, by a long stretch, the most qualified executive. As the nation is now realizing, executive experience matters and it matters quite a bit.

As I'm reading Rodgers' column I'm reminded of Dean Wormer's immortal words "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." Imagine if Dean Wormer had the opportunity to pass on some wisdom to Walter Rodgers, "Intellectually lazy, relying on cliches, and treating subjective opinion as though it is objective data, is no way to build an honorable reputation as a journalist, son." As soon as Rodgers finishes with one cliche he races to vomit out another one:

Then the public has to decide how attached it wants to get to the latest political celebrity. Celebritydom is damaging – both to the stars and their admirers. It is excessively egocentric. It transgresses the classic Greek rule of self-governance, "Beware of hubris!" Pride and vanity are the Achilles' heel of those who aspire to greatness.

Rodgers has at his disposal the objective data to answer his first question. The public elected a vacuous celebrity to the highest office in the land and the public polling of late shows that the public is already growing weary of the empty suit that they elected. President Obama managed his celebrity bubble adroitly - the brief half life of vacuous celebrity popped after he assumed office, rather than before he was elected. If Rodgers wants to argue that Governor Palin is the Conservative version of calorie-light political celebrity then he first needs to discount her accomplishments and secondly he needs to build a case for how such celebrity can be maintained for the next 3 and a half years, when even the Greatest Celebrity of All Time, the Messiah, the Lightworker, the One, couldn't maintain his celebrity for a year.

I'm sure all of us have heard the old adage of remaining silent when we don't know something, rather than speaking and removing all doubt about our status as a fool. All of us that is, except for Walter Rodgers. Here he aptly demonstrates that he has never been in receipt of such wisdom when he writes:

Republicans now in search of a new messiah might ask themselves if Palin is truly another Ronald Reagan, as more than a few would like to believe. It wasn't movie star glitter that made President Reagan so effective but rather his political genius, which rivaled that of Franklin Roosevelt.

Reagan charmed scores of congressional Democrats into embracing his points of view on dozens of issues. In 1981, I watched big-spending Democrats walk out of the West Wing completely "Reaganized," happily confessing they were converted to his spending reductions and other presidential initiatives.

Rodgers here is a victim to his own isolated mental model of reality. Simply because his latte-sipping crowd have asserted that Governor Palin is popular because she possesses move star glitter doesn't make it so. Rodgers again sets up a false choice, one of movie star glitter versus political genius, and he implies that people are prone to confusing the two and that Governor Palin is defined by movie star glitter.

The very genius of Reagan that Rodgers refers to, his ability to charm congressional Democrats, is the same genius possessed by Governor Palin, and it is this genius which enabled her to work so well with Alaska Democrats and earned her one of the highest Gubernatorial approval ratings in the nation. It doesn't serve an editorialist to set up a comparison in order to contrast a good example against a bad example and be completely ignorant of the fact that he's making the positive case instead of his intended negative case.

Rodgers continues with the Reagan comparison, which I might add only elevates Governor Palin, and has this to say:

He was aided by supreme self-confidence. That confidence, and his actor's sense of timing, compelled voters to like him. Political instinct made him far more than a celebrity. I can't imagine Reagan walking out of the governor's office in Sacramento before the job was completed – as Palin has done in Juneau.

Let's look at that comparison point by point. Does Governor Palin appear to lack self-confidence? If Rodgers believes so, then he should drive the point home by citing evidence of her lack of self-confidence. Does Governor Palin appear to lack a sense of timing? Her introduction on the national stage was handled admirably, her speech at the convention was a tour de force, she held her own against the Elder Statesman of the Senate in the Vice Presidential debate, she captures the interest of an audience whenever she makes a public appearance, her timing with her broadsides against President Obama drove news cycles and refocused the public debate to terms that were disadvantageous to the President. Her political instincts, as even her critics acknowledge, are finely honed, and seriously, does Rodgers really expect his readers to be swayed by an appeal to his own authority when he writes that he can't imagine Reagan acting in the manner chosen by Governor Palin. For Mr. Rodgers to expect his readers to invest any significance in his personal opinion he first has to demonstrate to his readers that his opinions are reasoned, supported by evidence, and have good predictive value. Mr. Rodgers fails on all counts, so, when his argument is boiled down to its essence it amounts to what parents see from 5 year olds, "I'm right because I say so."

Rodgers, having failed to make a solid argument in support of his position, now progresses to a doubling down strategy by giving condescending advice to Governor Palin, when he's previously failed to demonstrate the wisdom or experience necessary for his advice to be worthwhile:

Over the next three years, Palin needs to develop skills beyond a TV persona who can read scripts off a teleprompter.

First off, Governor Palin has an actual record of governing and doing so successfully, so Rodgers misses the mark by the span of a continent, for the best target of his advice is now sitting in the White House having benefited from his skill of reading scripts off a teleprompter. Are Rodgers' readers supposed to take him seriously when he so egregiously misses the target of his advice? Despite this compendium of errors, to which Rodgers seems oblivious, he feels the need to keep digging the hole he's stranded himself in, and he closes his editorial with this gem of wisdom:

During his campaign for governor, Schwarzenegger acknowledged his weakness on state policies. So he surrounded himself with wonks and worked 12-hour days reading and studying. Is Palin doing the same? Her July op-ed on cap-and-trade legislation was a flop. And her reference in August to the prospect of the sick, the elderly, and the disabled facing a government "death panel" brought plenty of heat but little light to the complicated issue of national healthcare reform.

America's political stage is increasingly a burlesque featuring embarrassingly ill-informed political stars. The problem is the public's obsession with political celebrities who outemote public servants and statesmen. Twenty minutes on "Saturday Night Live" trumps 20 years of wisdom nowadays.

Who adjudicated Governor Palin's Cap & Trade editorial to be a flop? It completely flustered Senators Kerry and Feinstein. It set Move-on.org scurrying desperately for donations so that they could produce a feeble ad which completely avoided substantive criticisms and focused on appeals to emotion. Again, on what basis is Rodgers arguing that the editorial was a flop? Simply asserting the editorial to be a flop is only convincing to those who inhabit Rodgers self-referential bubble.

Governor Palin's "Death Panels" remark was a political masterstroke, whether you agree with the change of course that followed in the debate or not. She characterized the fundamental concepts of health care rationing, faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions without providing appeal to courts, the imposition of subjective standards used to determine the value of life, and wrapped the whole ball of wax into one memorable phrase, much like the political genius, President Reagan did with his painting the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire. One small phrase captured the essence of a position. Secondly, how is Rodgers measuring whether light has been brought into the health care debate? I would argue that galvanizing a skeptical public towards rejecting ObamaCare worked magnificently in that it gave voice to ordinary voters. They heard of Governor Palin's remark, they compared their medical care to that of other nations, they knew their own views on the sanctity of life, they knew their own views on the operational efficiency of government programs, they knew their own views on how medical care should be allocated, and they came to the same conclusion as the one held by Governor Palin. She helped in crystallizing these disparate views into a principled rejection of the tenets of ObamaCare. By any objective measure her efforts did bring light to the debate, however by Rodgers' subjective measures, bringing light to a debate seems to be defined as agreeing with his position.

You recall how earlier I had noted that Rodgers arguments didn't seem to advance his thesis? The simple conclusion is that Rodgers has been arguing an unstated thesis for his arguments all support the thesis that he wants to minimize Governor Palin in the view of the public. He doesn't like, nor does he respect, Governor Palin, and no amount of evidence, which he isn't interested in reviewing, will overturn his emotional bias. He misleads his readers by implying that he will be analyzing the road that Governor Palin must travel in order to seek higher office and then as his essay unfolds he pulls his bait and switch and proceeds to argue the point that Governor Palin is a shallow celebrity because he says so.

And here folks, we have the state of modern journalism. A race to the bottom where subjective opinion, devoid of reference to facts, history, and reasoned analysis, counts as "wisdom." Walter Rodgers has illustrated the dire lack of professionalism inherent in modern opinion journalism. Unreasoned and emotional opinions have replaced opinions informed by analysis and fact. Welcome to the Dawn of the Age of Idiocracy.

“Whatever happened to the days when those in the media business took pride in their professionalism?”

HAHAHA! Who is this writer — Rip VanWinkle? Media professionalism. As if...

It seems first Sarah needs to learn the obvious: That doctors cut off your leg, your tonsils, etc. only for money, that you constantly receive medical treatment that doesn’t help you, that grandma needs a pain pill not an operation, the police act stupidly, colonoscopys find prostate cancer, communists belong in the White House, Medicare should be severely cut ....

Yes there is so much to learn, we can’t have an ignorant person as president.

This piece is totally off the mark. The media never had any professionalism, neither with respect to Gov. Palin or any other conservative. Such people will always be portrayed in the “professional” media as being worse than Hitler.

“Media Professionalism” officially left the planet with the advent of “Viewpoint Journalism.”

There is no longer a difference between mainstream media and propaganda, as everyone knows, and the “journalists” have rationalized it and taught it in the journalism schools.

Excellent op-ed rebuttal of Walter Rogers.

The author’s comment quoting the “Greek rule of self-governance”: “Beware of hubris!” Pride and vanity are the Achilles’ heel of those who aspire to greatness.” is a beautyiful thing. In point of fact, “pride and hubris” are required facets of chararcter nowadays to be considered a serious a dem candidate for just about any position.

First, Sarah is totally qualified to be president. Grover Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson were both two year gov. when elected POTUS. Teddy Roosevelt was a two year gov. when he was elected VP with McKinley........

Secondly, Sarah kept every major promise she made to the Alaskan people.

Thirdly, a associate producer for Saturday Night Live said that Sarah, “is the most confident person I have ever met in my life. Sarah was always on time, knew her lines, and didn't complain.”

Fourth, who in American politics talks like Sarah? Nobody! She takes on the big Zero and he backs down. She takes on David Letteman and he backs down. She writes two Facebook editorials, and stops ObamaDeathCare in it's tracks....

Lastly, there is no way Sarah could have gotten this far, this fast, and be stupid. She went from almost political obscurity, to the most powerful Republican force in the US in two months.......Yes, as the off duty police in Evansville, Indiana (her security) said, “She is treated like a Rock Star wherever she goes, but she doesn't act like it, she is completely unpretentious."

This is not new. The media in this country has gone from bias to out and out support of socialism. Rush is absolutely correct when he calls them the “State run media”. Only when they are soundly defeated and run out of business will freedom have a chance in this country.

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