In the past month, I have attempted eight times to talk to the reporters, writers and editors at the Anchorage Daily News about the paper’s coverage of Trig Palin’s maternity.
I was shut down or refused 7 times. The other effort resulted in an off-the-record phone call. In all cases, the party-line was toed: The editors and reporters are “intelligent” and they thoroughly investigated claims that the then-governor did not give birth to Trig Palin. And they came away satisfied that she, in fact, did so.
What was it specifically that allowed them to arrive at that conclusion?
No one said, other than the fact that reporter Lisa Demer talked to Mrs. Palin’s doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson and it was “clear” that it was Mrs. Palin’s baby. And that to suggest otherwise is “ridiculous.”
Collectively, the answer was that to pursue this matter was akin to the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories and that people are simply going to believe what they are going to believe.
All right, then tell me what Dr. Baldwin-Johnson said and I’ll believe you.
But by then, the answers to my inquiry were getting shorter and decidedly snippier.
So I searched – again - for a story that the Daily News might have written that I might have missed that might have made it all “clear.” And I couldn’t find one.
Laura Novak does the best she can with what essentially makes little, or no, sense.
Go ahead and read the rest of the article, and then come back and tell us what you think is the reason that the ADN did such an incredibly poor job of following up on a story that could have meant a Pulitzer Prize for the journalsit who broke it on the national stage.
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