I bet that somewhere Fox News’ maven Roger Ailes is not smiling. Even though he later denied it, I bet the famous New Yorker profile that indicated that he wasn’t totally pleased with Sarah Palin is now accurate due to this report from The Politico’s Ben Smith:
Whatever Palin’s aim today, it wasn’t to please her current employer. I passed a frustrated Fox News team, which hadn’t been given a heads-up on her appearance, on my way over; and she praised Newt Gingrich’s confrontation last night with debate moderators, saying he’d done well by “calling out the press.”
“C’mon, let’s talk about substantial issues,” she said.
She was referring to the scene at last nights GOP Presidential debate in Iowa when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich confronted that well known liberal, Daily Kos diarist, socialist Chris Wallace :). Gingrich was biting the hand that once fed him; Palin is biting the hand that feeds her, helps make her wealthy, promotes her and allows her to avoid talking to mainstream media reporters.
But now she has:
Palin also gave extended interviews to CNN’s Don Lemon and ABC’s Jake Tapper. Fox had a camera at the event, but none of its on-air correspondents appeared at her hourlong press conference.
It’s a GOOD development that she is talking to Don Lemon and Jake Trapper, so she can’t be faulted for that.
But Ailes must be at the very least raising one of his huge eyebrows as he reads how the person who gets big bucks from his company and whose exposure helps her in other areas isn’t interacting with Fox News and also yells “BRAVO!” to Gingrich’s attack on Wallace because Wallace acted like a journalist asking tough questions rather than a Sean Hannity seemingly reading partisan talking points.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.