Are the Media Treating Sarah Palin Fairly?

By Margaret Sullivan

Is Sarah Palin suffering from sexist treatment by a vicious media horde?

"Why would we want to throw Sarah Palin into a cycle of piranhas called the news media that have nothing better to ask questions about than her personal life and her children?" McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said last week, explaining why, at that point, Palin hadn’t given any interviews except one to People magazine. He added: "Until we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment."

Media people, of course, are not known for their deference, whether to old men or to young women. (Palin is 44, a generation younger than John McCain at 72.)

Nor is deference — which may be defined as "a yielding" — something most journalists think is appropriate when dealing with a candidate who could be, in the overused expression, "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

The McCain campaign’s biggest complaint is that too much attention is being directed, by the media old boys club, to Palin’s personal life. The specifics include the revelation that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, and that the demands of Palin’s young family, including a months-old baby with Down syndrome, may make her an unwise choice as a prospective vice president.

I offer the following thoughts, informed by my own experience as a woman in a largely male business, as someone who may have been, at age 42, the youngest female editor of a metropolitan newspaper at the time I was appointed; and as a mother who has struggled to balance a challenging job with raising a son and daughter who were 11 and 6 when I became editor:

*Everything about a candidate for president or vice president is fair game during a campaign. It has become clear that the McCain campaign failed to vet Palin thoroughly. That leaves the news media to do the job. I’d like to see as much attention given to Palin’s intelligence, policy views and level of experience as to her family. Given the way candidates have always used their spouses and children as humanizing props, scrutiny of family life can’t be considered off- limits.

*Many men and women are capable of balancing complicated or challenging family lives with highly responsible jobs, but it’s never easy and often stressful, and — in the end — it has the potential to shortchange both job and family. You simply can’t be in two places at once.

Palin’s family situation is especially complicated, given her special-needs infant and her pregnant teenager. Many working mothers I’ve talked to are wondering if she is showing good judgment in placing herself in line to possibly become commander in chief of the armed forces.

This has more to do with common sense than sexism, and cuts across gender lines. For instance, many thought John Edwards should have cut short his presidential campaign when his wife’s cancer recurred.

*The only real gender bias I’ve seen in the treatment of Palin has been in selecting her — and then attempting to protect her from media scrutiny as if she’s a tender schoolgirl. I don’t believe that a man with as little experience as she has would ever have been chosen to run for vice president.

Palin is in this contest because she is a fresh-faced woman. Now that she’s in the arena, we need to see if she lives up to her hoopster nickname, "Sarah Barracuda."

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Originally published by EDITOR.

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