CARPE MEDIA

by Chad Painter

Chickens in newspaper... ahem. (Source: hot-screensaver.com)

Katie Couric isn’t known for her hard questions, and it seemed like she was throwing a softball to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin when she asked at one point in the now-infamous CBS Evening News interview “…what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?”

 Couric’s seemingly simple question, though, was tougher than it sounded: Palin could have given one of five possible answers.

Option 1: “I’m not going to answer that question, and here’s why…”
As a friend pointed out to me, Palin couldn’t have named any one publication in particular. The New York Times? Too liberal. The Wall Street Journal? Too conservative. Because transparency is the big buzzword in journalism circles these days, Palin could have dodged the question by explaining why she couldn’t answer it.

Option 2: “I read my local papers.”
A politician can never go wrong by going local, and listing the Frontiersman or the Juneau Empire could have answered the question—and might have even enhanced her folksy charm.

Option 3: “Like a growing number of Americans, I don’t read newspapers.”
Sure, it would have been a sucker punch, but it would have knocked the smug smile off the press’s collective face. 

Option 4: “I read a bit of everything, from the New York Times to the Atlantic Monthly, from watching Bill O’Reilly to Stephen Colbert.”
Palin would have demonstrated the worldliness that Couric was prodding for, and she would have been safe from attacks from both the far left and far right.

Option 5: “I’ve read most of them.” 
This was Palin’s actual answer. Apparently, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—get any more specific.

The major problem with Palin’s non-answer is that it reinforces the media’s image of her. We’ve already decided that she’s an idiot who is wholly unprepared and unable to be vice-president, and we’re more than ready to jump on any of her numerous gaffes.

The press loves convenient story lines. That’s why politicians have been reduced to caricatures throughout history, from Al Gore (a stiff) and Bill Clinton (a womanizer) to Richard Nixon (a crook) and William Howard Taft (a fatty). Once the media decides your story line, it’s hard to create a new one. 

Palin hasn’t been helped by the oddball strategy of her handlers, who insist on keeping her out of the press. As David Rosman wrote in the Sept. 12 issue of the Columbia Missourian, a politician doesn’t want to make the press angry. Rosman’s point was that an angry press will dig up skeletons, and his advice to Palin was to start making the easy rounds, from O’Reilly to Letterman and Leno, then on to the likes of Couric. It was solid advice, and it has benefits besides keeping the press out of Palin’s closet. The more interviews she gives, the better she’ll get at answering questions; and the more questions she answers, the more she’ll be in control of her own public image.

Back to the original question: Does Sarah Palin read newspapers? I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t care. But I would like a potential vice-president to be able to give a straightforward and effective answer to a simple question.