What happened during the campaign was that organically, Alaska bloggers formed their own “all-Palin, all-the-time” reporting collective — their own de facto reporting pool — that often rivaled traditional outlets in terms of output, and one that regularly surpassed the mainstream media for local knowledge and insight.
Did they sometimes play a bruising brand of hardball? You betcha. (What else would you expect in the Last Frontier?) But were they mostly fair and accurate in their Palin coverage? From what I’ve seen, absolutely. Remember, last year, it was Alaska bloggers who tried to put the brakes on the far-fetched blogosphere campaign, launched outside of Alaska, that raised doubts about whether Palin was really the mother of her new son, Trig, or if Palin’s daughter was actually the mother.
Palin and the Alaska bloggers have become, in a way, inseparable. You can’t really talk about the roller-coaster ride that Palin’s been on over the past 10 months without talking about the local bloggers who have been responsible for so many of the political dips she’s suffered since August 29.
A completely unique (and contentious) relationship formed between the bloggers and Palin, and looking at the liaison from afar, I’m not sure which side was more obsessed with the other. Certainly the bloggers, collectively, have shone a homegrown, 24/7 spotlight on Palin that I doubt any other local politician has ever been subjected to. With their relentless pursuit of the facts and their rooting out of whatever Palin prevarications stood in the way of the truth, Alaskan bloggers, as well as their energized army of readers, have been relentless in fact-checking the governor, calling out her abuses of power, and holding her to the standard of transparency that she herself promised as a statewide candidate in 2006.
So, yes, Alaska bloggers have been obsessed with Palin. (They’ve become Palin-tologists?) What’s been so unusual is that that fascination has been reflected right back at them by Palin, who seems utterly fixated on the bloggers and driven to distraction by her inability to control them. Not yet sporting the kind of alligator-thick skin that’s pretty much required to run for national office, Palin has shown a real propensity to latch onto the online critiques of her and lash out at the bloggers.
As Time noted last week, “A more experienced, more familiar politician would have been ready for the ramping, but Palin seemed consumed by it. Instead of ignoring hostile bloggers, she combed the Web for their latest postings.” And Wonkette recently captured the obsession with the snarky headline “Sarah Palin Will Soon Condemn, Bomb Entire Internet.”
It was fitting, then, that the day after making her resignation announcement, Palin had her attorney issue a strange, over-the-top, four-page letter threatening legal action against any news organizations that picked up on the Palin resignation speculation that had been aired by influential Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore.
Appearing on MSNBC in the wake of Palin’s stunning announcement, as observers tried to make some sense of it, Moore, searching for a possible explanation, pointed out that there had been a “scandal rumor” floating around Alaska for months about a possible corruption investigation centered on Palin. Moore clearly did not validate the claim of the rumor. She simply pointed out that it existed. Palin’s legal eagle, though, then claimed Moore had stated the corruption charge as “fact.”
By singling her out for public denunciation, all Palin did was turn the Alaska blogger into a media celebrity and guarantee that she’d be given a larger media platform to discuss the rumor. As the wildly popular Anchorage-based site Mudflats noted with glee:
Shannyn Moore, the aforementioned blogger has now, courtesy of the Palin numbskullery, appeared on The Thom Hartmann Show, The Ed Schultz Show, The Ron Reagan Show, Alan Colmes, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. She’s also been written up on the Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Crooks and Liars, Brad Blog, Think Progress, Daily Kos, and dozens of others. The Associated Press has picked up the story, and so has KTUU and the Anchorage Daily News. Way to squash that rumor. [emphasis in original]
In other words, Alaska bloggers have been blessed with a perfect foil: a politician who overreacts to criticism and who often lashes out in hopes of exacting personal revenge, a politician who can’t walk away from a fight, but who often doesn’t have the facts on her side when she enters the online fray.
Saradise lost, indeed.
Source: Media Matters for America
