Posted on 09/04/2010 1:18:07 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Who's up for another Newsweek take on Sarah Palin?
Newsweek’s latest effort to unravel the mystery that is Sarah Palin is about what readers have come to expect.
NEWSWEEK WONDERS: WHY DON’T THE HIT PIECES WORK ANYMORE? ANSWER: MORE AMERICANS TRUST SARAH PALIN THAN TRUST NEWSWEEK
Newsweek has an article on its website on Sarah Palin titled Why No Amount of Reporting Can Hurt Sarah Palin. The article is extremely informative–only not in the way intended by its author, Ravi Somaiya.
The headline is mostly correct even as the rest of the piece fails.
Michael Joseph Gross’s stories, headlined “Sarah Palin: the Sound and the Fury” and “Sarah Palin’s Shopping Spree: Yes, There’s More …” are filled with the kind of detail that sets the political press frothing (with outrage or glee, depending on the outlet). She’s a bad tipper, he reports; she abuses staff and throws things; she is vengeful, perhaps “unhinged”; her aides are amateurish and vindictive; she displays signs of paranoia. Gross found, he says, a “sad and moldering strangeness” as soon as he looked under the surface of her world.
After repeating choice tidbits from the two above hit pieces, Somaiya admits that “It is hard to know whether what Gross reports is true—many of his assertions are based on opinions, and anonymous ones at that.” But that doesn’t stop Somaiya from dutifully repeating what he doesn’t know to be true and expanding upon it.
The author also claims “Palin is insulated in ways that other public figures can only dream of. Her supporters defend her like so many lionesses surrounding a cub.” Perhaps, if Newsweek spent as much time speculating why that might be as it does repeating claims “it is hard to know” are true, Somaiya might have done what he set out to do: inform his readers.
Think back to 2008. Palin is just named to be John McCain’s running mate. JournOList members are plotting how best to coordinate their attacks in the media for which they write. Within days of the Palin VP announcement, the same press that couldn’t ask Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards about his mistress and love child–after the National Enquirer gift-wrapped names, dates, photos, and a mind-boggling array of details–descended like wolves on Wasilla, Alaska, in an effort to dig up dirt on the Alaskan governor.
Both of these opposite reactions demonstrated that Newsweek and it’s MSM brethren were engaged in more than just bias. They were engaged in full-fledged content management. Instead of merely reporting the news, they wished to shape the news, to manufacture it.
The attacks didn’t stop when the campaign ended. Newsweek might have some problems with reporting, but they can sniff out an ideological threat. After Palin returned to private life, Newsweek ran their infamous Palin cover story, pictured below.
Back to their latest effort.
As stated, Newsweek got the headline mostly right while Somaiya stumbled around what was another tired Palin hit piece from the $1 newsweekly. The headline alluded to “reporting.” But “reporting” is not what we get from the magazine and its bedfellows at Vanity Fair. It’s a mish-mash of whispers, gossip and cluelessness and third-hand anonymous sources.
Somaiya can’t come out and pen an article that argues the merits of his ideology. He’d rather try to be clever about it. The only thing is: after seeing the same trick over and over, even the most dim-witted eventually figure it out.
The answer which Ravi Somaiya couldn’t fathom?
The answer why pieces like his, as well as the two from Vanity Fair, have almost no effect is simple: we don’t believe you any longer.
There’s a reason Newsweek fell on hard times. Sure, it lost readers and was managed horribly, but it long ago squandered its credibility producing Obama hagiographies and attacking those it disagreed with ideologically.
So, knock yourself out, Ravi. Serve up one, two, ten more Sarah Palin hatchet attacks masquerading as “analysis.” It doesn’t matter.
Those who read you are already convinced. Those who don’t?
They take what’s printed in your pages–at least when it comes to American politics–with a giant-sized block of salt. Newsweek’s attacking Sarah Palin again? What’s so special about that? That’s not news: that’s policy.
One of the few institution Americans trust less than the Mainstream Media–which includes Newsweek–is Congress. Somaiya should thank his editors that Americans can’t vote media organizations into oblivion like they’re about to do to Congress.
Oh wait, they can. That’s what put Newsweek into its current situation. At some point, one would bet that Newsweek would figure it out before the next sale comes down.
But that’s not where the smart money is.
Apparently one can buy Newsweak for less than the cost of one issue at the newsstand.
Newsweek is irrelevant.
The statement is correct. More people believe Sarah Palin than the kneepad media including Newsweak. Simple as that.
Because Newsweak is limp and impotent?
I don’t think I have read a newsweek magazine for at least 20 and maybe 40 years. Newsweek and Time are worthless. Won’t they please go away? Save the trees, please.
Because there are more Americans who believe in Sarah Palin than Americans who read Newsweek...
And the very few that still read the magazine (libs) are not her supporters to begin with.
THEY ONLY REACH DENTAL PATIENTS WHO ARE IN PAIN ALREADY.
It must be galling to Newsweak to realize that Sarah Palin’s net worth is far, far, far greater than theirs.
I wouldn’t waste a dollar found on a sidewalk to purchase a copy of Newsweak, yet I will most certainly donate as much as legally possible to her presidential campaign.
“Apparently one can buy Newsweak for less than the cost of one issue at the newsstand.”
Indeed. When you think about it, it’s a total ripoff when a single copy of the magazine is sold at a retail price that’s greater than the cost of the whole company.
Short snapshot: Newsweek has been marginalized. It is a printed version of the “Daily Kos” and no more. It is not 1973 (i.e. Watergate era) any longer.
MORE AMERICANS TRUST SARAH PALIN THAN TRUST NEWSWEEK
AMEN.
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