Throughout the fall, I repeatedly criticized the John McCain
campaign for sequestering Sarah Palin from reporters. Palin --
named "Conservative
of the Year" by Human Events -- agrees in an interview with
John Gizzi:
'The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more
shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak
to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to
do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not
necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was
so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain
that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that
some of his people were making regarding the media
contacts?
But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to
speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message
out to the electorate. (Emphasis
added.)
If Palin had been allowed to hold press conferences with the
reporters covering her on the campaign trail, rather than thrown
into high-stakes one-on-one interviews with Charlie Gibson and
Katie Couric, it might have made a world of difference in how she
was perceived. Palin, a former journalist, knows more about media
than most of the Republican "media experts."
