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Media Commentator Paul JanenschHow will Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick to be his vice president, be defined in the news media between now and election day, which is just two months away?  Media commentator Paul Janensch tells us how he sees it.

Sarah Palin was a surprise choice.  How she is defined by the news media depends on OTHER surprises.  These have been busy days for the national news media.  

On Thursday evening, August 28, Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a packed stadium and 40 million television viewers.  The next day John McCain, the expected Republican nominee, pushed Obama off the top of the news agenda by introducing his running mate, a person who was only in her second year as governor of Alaska and before that had served as mayor and council member in a small town near Anchorage.  

Almost everyone was stunned – including Republicans, even Republicans in Alaska, and journalists.  Palin had been on hardly any short lists.  Then Palin was pushed off the top of the news agenda by Hurricane Gustav as it barreled toward the Gulf Coast.  This was three years after the Bush administration had bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina.  

Because of Gustav, the Republican National Convention in St. Paul was scaled back at the beginning.   Then another story came along to compete with Gustav.  

Palin, a strong opponent of abortion, and her husband Todd said their 17-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol was five months pregnant.  They said she would keep the baby and marry the father.  That was a surprise.  The McCain campaign said the daughter’s pregnancy was being acknowledged because of what it called “mud-slinging and lies” on the Internet.  

Anti-McCain blogs alleged that Sarah Palin had faked the birth of her fifth child, who has Down syndrome, and that the child was actually Bristol’s.  The Obama campaign denied it had anything to do with the rumors.  The McCain campaign said McCain knew about Bristol’s real pregnancy and didn’t think it mattered.  If true, that’s pretty naïve.  

Public relations professionals will tell you to release any negative information while you can still spin it in a positive way. You can’t keep it secret, and surprises can hurt you.  

In the weeks ahead, Sarah Palin will come across in news accounts as someone who copes with the same kind of problems many of us face, or as just another politician who doesn’t level with the public until she has to.

Media commentator Paul Janensch is a former newspaper editor who teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.