Media Matters - Palin, the press, and her pregnancy
"Sarah Palin emerged as a media critic last week when she sat down with a conservative filmmaker to critique the press coverage she received during the fall campaign. As somebody who withstood the unique scrutiny that general elections generate, Palin certainly deserves to air her complaints. And if they're legitimate ones, the press ought to give them a serious hearing. But Palin needs to be more accurate in her appraisals, because regarding one key media controversy from the campaign, she did more media revising last week than media critiquing.
In the interview segment posted at YouTube, Palin was quite critical of the nasty conspiracy theory that was floated online right after she was tapped as Sen. John McCain's running mate. The rumor claimed that Palin was not really the mother of her newborn son Trig, but that her high school daughter, Bristol, was actually the mother and that Sarah Palin had "faked" the pregnancy to cover for Bristol. Palin claims the media picked up the rumor from liberal bloggers and then ran with it.
That Palin's still steaming about the episode is not surprising. Lots of people both online and off, and from the right and the left, considered the fake pregnancy story to be one of the low points in the campaign. Unfortunately, in her role as press critic, Palin misremembers the media's role. Or she's consciously trying to rewrite history.
Because the simple fact is the mainstream media did not spread the pregnancy story. Nor, contrary to Palin's accusation, were liberal bloggers responsible for it. Most A-list bloggers actively avoided the story, and some online writers even publicly decried the rumor when it first surfaced. It was actually some over-eager diarists (i.e. blog readers who are free to write pretty much whatever they want online) who helped hatch and amplify the story. And it was one high-profile mainstream blogger, from outside the liberal netroots community, who stepped forward to promote it. "