Palin Agrees To ABC News Interview
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin will finally talk to the press — or one news organization, at least — after all:
Under pressure for being shielded for questioning, Sarah Palin has agreed to sit down with Charles Gibson of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” according to an ABC News official.
No other interviews are scheduled. It will be the first TV interview for Palin since she was named 10 days ago as running mate to John McCain.
Palin had planned to return to Alaska this weekend but is so popular on the stump that she is going to stay out a few more days before returning home. One of her sons deploys to Iraq on Thursday.
Palin plans to sit down with Gibson later this week in Alaska, the source said.
The McCain campaign kept her off Sunday shows this weekend and plans to be sparing with high-risk network encounters, which they contend are unimportant to voters despite the media’s fixation on them.
But McCain officials could see her reticence was feeding the narrative of her being unprepared for the job.
The pressure will be on in three areas now:
1. Palin: She’ll have to be ready for any question thrown at her. It will be a widely-watched interview that could further boost her political stock and her ticket’s message.
2. ABC: The network came under withering criticism — including from many scholarly media types — for its questioning of Democrat Barack Obama during a Democratic debate. It was accused of going after Obama more than anyone else, basically following Clinton campaign talking points and focusing on personality versus solid issues. If the questions given to Palin are softball questions or ones that would be too easily expected to be asked, ABC News will likely be accused by Democrats of essentially doing p.r. for the McCain campaign. And if they’re too hard on her or ask something that is a big surprise and creates an awkward moment from her, Republicans will say it’s typical of the liberal news media.
3. The McCain campaign: It will have to prep her but at this point a lot of the questions, including the negative ones, can be easily anticipated.
The prediction here: It’ll get huge ratings, she’ll do just fine and the McCain campaign will either decide she can have more opportunities to talk to the press (expect a Fox News interview within weeks) or continuing to limit her interaction with the press, arguing that she has shown she can do that but is too busy with her campaign schedule. Unless there’s a big surprise, look for Palin’s popularity to go up after the interview. One reason: she’ll get many more viewers from that kind of interview than if she had gone on a Sunday morning network news interview show.
10 Responses to “Palin Agrees To ABC News Interview”
I expect her to be treated more or less with kid gloves. I don't see ABC sticking their necks out, and Charlie Gibson is certainly no Tim Russert. So can the GOP keep the novelty factor alive for 2 months if they continue the hiding strategy? This is a fickle electorate with a short attention span… At any rate, after so many days of being shielded from unscripted questions I think we can drop the pretense of this woman being a “pitbull”. She might like shooting animals from helicopters and she might be vindictive, but when I think “pitbull” I think of someone like Winston Churchill or Harry Truman, not someone who lets others run interference for her and requires a heavily tweaked artificial narrative.
Charlie Gibson is the ABC equivalent of Matt Lauer.
Although, to be honest, I'm not sure who would be a good choice among the major network “journalists.”
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I would seriously pay to see Jon Stewart interview her. That is my fondest dream…fat chance it would actually happen.
I guess we'll see if either one is able to handle this.
Rachel Maddow. Who is openly gay. And brilliant. I would love to see her interview Palin.
Gibson has demonstrated a combination of respect and lack of bias, unlike Williams & Couric who have been more tilted toward the Dems [except that Couric has shown occasional feistiness herself in asking tough queries of Dems].
It looks like MSNoBodyCares is putting David Gregory into the chief anchor position on the debates, removing emo-guy Matthews & generally idiotic Olberman from those duties. Can't wait for their contributions now that they've been demoted to “analysts.”
Maddow is brilliant through a very flawed lens…..
It might make for boring TV, but I'd want to hear a continuous policy discussion where one can't get off with the first 4 facts about a topic. The problem with such a scenario: the journalist has to be capable of it as well.
Maddow is frequently illogical. That makes her fit in fine with the other liberal talkers. She has even been on mainstream liberal network broadcasts, I've noticed.