Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Babygate

Add Katie Couric and the rest of the CBS News team to the Misogyny Media Watch List.

Their coverage of what they probably would have loved to call Babygate was completely out of proportion with its relative newsworthiness. Instead of allowing sourpuss Bob Schieffer to bore us to tears with speculation and water cooler gossip, perhaps Ms. Couric should have looked into these crazy little things called facts.

Couric certainly needed to report the news of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy, but to treat this revelation as one of the great political bombshells is ludicrous. To imply that this may-- or as the tone suggested should-- destroy her campaign is reprehensible.

Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Biden's son is a lobbyist who is under investigation for a failed hedge fund deal. Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's daughter had unprotected sex with her boyfriend. Which story is more relevant to the election? Yet, which story received more primetime coverage this evening?

Do you really think this would be big story had it been Biden's teenage daughter who was with child? Do you really think it would be suggested that his "bad parenting" means he can't lead the country?

As a mother of daughters, Couric should be ashamed of herself for putting her ideology and ratings ahead of her gender.

As for the hypocrisy angle, Palin is a pro-lifer who is for birth control and abstinence education is schools. For whatever reasons, the daughter chose to ignore both the abstinence and the birth control message. To use a this kid's mistake as a tool to change the outcome of an election is beyond the Palin.

1 comment:

Suzy said...

I think all the news outlets suffer from lack of enough news to talk about. Did I mention that Anna Nicole Smith died?