"Let's just get right to it. This Los Angles Times piece about the religious views of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is pretty much worthless."
     A post that appeared yesterday at www.getreligion.org.

Like many people, I skim scads of newspapers and websites. One of the few I read everyday, however, is www.getreligion.org.

The site does a terrific job of fulfilling its mission: analyzing how religion is covered in the mainstream media. Its relevance in 2008 is abundantly clear. It's hardly a secret that the religious views and associations of candidates for president (and vice president) have been examined, critiqued, and caricatured. As a result getreligion.org has lots of fodder for comment.

I'm talking about yesterday's post because what Mollie Ziegler had to say about the Time's hatchet job (which carried the totally unhelpful and inaccurate headline "Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy") illustrates the larger point which she makes in her second paragraph.

"Considering that I am a journalist, I'm somewhat sad to report that I believe nothing I read or watch when it comes to coverage of Palin. I have seen way too high seething anger, even about issues that have nothing to do with religion."

We've talked more than once about the almost mindless fury aimed at Gov. Palin. Sometimes the source is obvious: partisanship so extreme that it has capsized what little remained of fairness in the "mainstream media," now little more than an extension of the Obama presidential campaign.

Other times you'd need a psychologist to untangle the source of the disdain/disgust/disparagement of a woman who is the astonishingly popular governor of Alaska. In either case the objective is the same: destroy Palin and in the process destroy the chances of John McCain becoming President.

I'd encourage you to read Ziegler's piece in its entirety. (See http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3975&print=1). Let me quote (and paraphrase) a few of the many critiques she makes of the Los Angeles Times article. They apply not just to the way Palin's faith is maligned and misrepresented, but also to just about every facet of her life. The unfairness includes

1. Describing Palin as something she isn't. For example, she is not a fundamentalist, which (as the influential Associated Press stylebook suggests) has become less a term of description than an all-purpose pejorative.

2. Claims are made that aren't "backed up by any independent source," and "Needless to say, there's no context," Ziegler writes. More to the point the assertions of people whom Palin defeated for office are treated as gospel, even if the only "source" for these claims is the clear animus.

3. A subset of this is that smears that have circulated on the Internet since her name first surfaced--and which have since been thoroughly discredited--are repeated as fact. Too many reporters have forgotten nothing--especially the falsehoods--and learned nothing--that these claims were bogus.

4. Ziegler quotes one source with first-hand knowledge of how Palin has governed. It does not in any way bear out either the headline or the thrust of the story (a common occurrence in many hit jobs on Palin). "Her aides say Palin's caution at the intersection of religion and governance is a studied effort to share her beliefs without forcing them on Alaska. 'She's obviously an intensively religious person,' said Bill McAllister, Palin's chief spokesman as governor. 'She understands that she's the governor and not preacher in chief. Religion informs her decisions, but she is not out to impose her views on Alaska.'"

5. Constant effort to ridicule her beliefs, even though they are shared by a plurality of the American people or even by a substantial majority of the public.

A very effective part of these character assassination pieces (because it is so grotesquely unfair) is to attribute motivation to someone and then say the person didn't carry out that behavior in public. It's a two-fer.

You get to convey a total inaccurate impression of what someone believes and then leave the reader to question whether the person is an insincere fraud or merely waiting for her chance.

I wholly concur with Ziegler's cut-to-the-chase lament and conclusion: "We get it. You hate her. She makes you kuh-razy. But don't stop following basic journalism practices just because you're enraged by a popular conservative female in power."

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

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