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Great Moments In Journalism: Sarah Palin Marginalization Starts Early At MSNBC

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» 23 comments

palin_11-13Beginning next week Sarah Palin and her book, “Going Rogue,” are going to be everywhere.

But we got a preview today of one way she’ll be welcomed — with marginalization, jokes and borderline sexist segments.

Friday on MSNBC, Dylan Ratigan spent a few minutes during his Morning Meeting to address, “what is it about Palin that drives America wild?” He and his staff put together a Letterman-esque “Top 10 Reasons America is Obsessed with Sarah Palin.” And you can imagine the direction this goes…

#9? “She’s hot!” #6? Ratigan calls her the “ultimate capitalist” because “she’ll sell anything to anybody for any reason.”

And the number one reason America is obsessed with Palin: “Family drama that makes you feel better about your own.”

This probably won’t surprise a lot of people, and she’s a public figure so it’s not entirely unfair for Ratigan and others to make jokes about her. Furthermore when she’s out on her media blitz – Oprah, a five-parter with Barbara Walters and much more – she’ll probably throw some serious jabs of her own. But look at the way the video was promoted on msnbc.com’s TV front page:
msnbc_11-13

Besides being a pretty degrading image of Sarah Palin, this shot was proven long ago to be photoshopped and fake. So why use it? Well, depending on your point of view, you probably have a guess.

Here’s the segment:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy


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  • TfT

    MSNBC presenting known false information as truth? No way! Say it ain’t so. I look forward to seeing a follow-up article on this when Jon Stewart takes on MSNBC! HA (in my best Chris Matthews imitation).

  • germ

    Oh, but MSNBC is a REAL news station.

  • Glynnis MacNicol

    Behold the beginnings of the MSM getting a collective shiver up its leg. There will be more than enough reasons to hold Palin to account in the coming weeks without resorting to infuriating nonsense like this.

  • marigrace

    Geez…That video clip reminds me of a supermarket tabloid. Same intellectual level.

    Frankly I am so sick of hearing about Palin and Prejean. What is it about those women that frightens the lamestream media so much? You never hear anything about the intellecual ineptness of the hula hooping gardener (sic) in the WH.

  • Tommy Christopher

    Maybe MSNBC hopes a “War with Palin” will do for their ratings what the White House v Fox did for Fox News. They had to expect to get shit for using that picture.

  • TfT

    Steve, Tommy, Glynnnis:

    Have any of you contacted MSNBC and asked for a retraction, apology, or any kind of statement regarding their use of false photos?

  • m

    Nice catch. It’s really bad that MSNBC didn’t vet the image, or at least include a tag explaining it’s an altered photograph if they knew it was fake.

    That picture in general is amusing on so many levels. It doesn’t look fake, so I can really understand why it cons people into thinking its real. What feeds into the reality of it is that it symbolizes a lot of what people think sums Palin up. So that it was brought into an entertainment segment like this isn’t surprising.

    >Frankly I am so sick of hearing about Palin and Prejean. What is it about those women that frightens the lamestream media so much?

    Uh, because they both decide to go on the talkshow circuit. If they don’t want to be in the media, then they need to start being reclusive instead of going on TV and do interviews.

    Prejean is an interesting story because there was a lot of drama following her beauty pageant comments, highlighting the divide on social issues in this country.

    Palin is an interesting story because she’s just like Obama was 4 years ago; smashed into the national spotlight from out of nowhere, she’s an interesting person that people want to know more about and she clearly plays with the media in the best way she can.

  • http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

    Lamesauce. As Glynnis pointed out, if you want to criticize Sarah Palin, you certainly can do so while sticking to things she’s actually said and done. No need to invent dumb inaccurate things.

  • 77denile

    Finally! A post somewhat critical of MSNBC! I was beginning to think Mediaite was only capable of being critial of FOX and CNN. Cynical me – thought it had something to do with Dan being employed by NBC/MSNC

  • MartiniShark

    You just know that Olberman is getting so jazzed about all the cutting, acidic humorous comments he gets to make this week that the staff will putting news paper and cedar shavings under his desk.

  • Jim R

    Dylan should apologize to his listeners and Palin, this stuff is infuriating and unnecessary.

    Besides, sometimes no exaggeration is required – just reporting what she actually says and does provides ample fodder.

  • rmbltmbl

    Just imagine for a second what would happen to Fox News if they did something like this.

  • http://trickletown.vox.com/ Trickletown

    I predict Sarah Palin will get creamed next week. MSNBC and the MSM have their talons at the ready, and I’m afraid her publicity tour will show her to be as mediocre as she ever was.

  • mzalia

    How could Sister Sarah Palin be as mediocre as the US Senate, all 100 of them?

  • Vituperator

    Give the Cockroach-in-Chief about one more year and the American people will view Palin like a Joan of Arc.

  • Sunnyr

    The least the scumbags on MSNBC can do is use REAL photographs of Sarah Palin, instead of the photo-shopped picture of her head on someone else’s body wearing a “flag” bikini! That is totally unethical, cheap, shoddy and so like the morons on MSNBC. They have stooped to new levels of pond scum politics!

  • StewartIII
  • ImNotBlue

    Glynnis MacNicol says:
    November 13, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Does that mean we should expect a “Your Moment of Palin” to take up the next week? Oh… boy… how… interesting…

    Tommy Christopher says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    Come on Tommy… there are more people talking about this segment here, than actually watched the segment live. ;)

    m says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    I dunno… I thought it made Palin look a little chunkier than reality. But perhaps that’s just me.

    Prejean is an interesting story because there was a lot of drama following her beauty pageant comments, highlighting the divide on social issues in this country.

    No… it highlighted the divide on A social issue… just one. I think Ms. Prejean had every right to state her opinion… I continue to disagree with it… but let’s not over state the facts, and suggest that she’s some kind of political something. She’s just an attractive woman who doesn’t support gay marriage… and anyone who wants to put her beyond that (IMO, that includes folks like Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann), is doing themselves and their political objectives, a great disservice.

  • Facebook User

    “Maybe MSNBC hopes a “War with Palin” will do for their ratings what the White House v Fox did for Fox News. They had to expect to get shit for using that picture.”

    The WH vs Fox News feud barely changed Fox News’ ratings at all.

    http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/whcritique-20091102.jpg

    “Just imagine for a second what would happen to Fox News if they did something like this.”

    They did.

    http://mediamatters.org/research/200807020002

    ————————————————————————-

    By the way, the outrage from you people is absolutely hilarious. You’re all so thin-skinned freaking out over some pictures and making a federal case out of it. Even crying if MSNBC is “real news” and that Jon Stewart should fact check them on a clearly satirical segment? LOL… Please. If you didn’t realize, the whole “Top 10 reasons America is obsessed with Sarah Palin” was meant to make fun of Palin and just be a filler segment for comedy. This was very evident when Ratigan showed “number 9″ as being “She’s HOT!”, and then went on to show the photo shopped pictures of her showing how “hot” she is. If you can’t see something like that, you’re either ignorant, can’t take a joke or just plain stupid. Hell, they even complimented her a few times. Plus, he never even said those were real pictures of her or this is how she dresses… in fact, it is fairly easy to tell they are photo shopped. They are all over the internet, too. So all of you people paranoid over nothing need to lighten up… it’s not the end of the world to show well-known photo shopped pictures in a satirical segment. If anything, those pictures make her look better. Compared to Fox News, who showed photo shopped pictures of the NYT columnists making them look hideous… and they were actually criticizing them as if the segment was newsworthy. I’m sure none of you were criticizing Fox for that, let alone all of their other ridiculous missteps.

  • shootfromthehip

    “Just imagine for a second what would happen to Fox News if they did something like this.”

    Um, that’s every day on Fox News, sad to say. Using false photos? Check (see doctored pictures of NY Times writers Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe). Using old file footage of different rallies to make it appear the crowd looked bigger for Bachmann’s rally? Check. The list goes on and on…..

    And it could be argued that MSNBC.com didn’t know the picture was a proven fake. That’s what Fox would sat, anyway.

  • ImNotBlue

    shootfromthehip says:
    November 14, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    So what you’re saying is that MSNBC is no better or different than FNC?

  • Sunnyr

    Vituperator says:
    November 13, 2009 at 10:02 pm

    Give the Cockroach-in-Chief about one more year and the American people will view Palin like a Joan of Arc.

    My sentiments exactly! I doubt it will take a whole year! UGH!! Counting the days………………..

  • shootfromthehip

    I wonder of Joan of Arc blamed everyone but herself and lied in her tell all book.

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