Andrew, who's been doing yeoman's work on the Palin beat these last few weeks, has a valid point here:
Until governor Sarah Palin gives a full press conference, it seems to me that the cable news outlets should stop running her stump speeches in full on television. The deal is: candidates get to broadcast their message if the press get to question them thoroughly. That's how real democracy works - give and take. What the Palin-McCain campaign wants is all give and no take: an indirect propaganda filter and the outrageous precedent of no press conferences in presidential campaigns. This is an assault on democracy. It is closer to Russian or Georgian democracy than American. If cable news continues to enable this chilling process, they will become complicit.
It does make you appreciate the Campbell Browns of the world, as minor as her rebellions have been.
Andrew also posits an interesting theory of Palin and the media:
My view is that the Palin candidacy is such a farce the mainstream media simply do not know what to do. The sane response is to dismiss it as a joke, to reveal the vacuity and mendacity of her record, to demand an open-ended press conference, and to hash out the ignorance and bigotry and crass populism she channels. But that would not be "balanced," would it?
"Simply do not know what to do" would certainly describe my first reaction to Palin.
--Noam Scheiber