SF Chronicle Writer's 'End-Run' Around Balance on Palin

In his look at the "McCain campaign's end-run around media," San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Joe Garofoli pitted one media insider's defense of McCain campaign strategy on the matter of Gov. Palin's press availability, and that at the end of his 20-paragraph story:

"All politicians go through a stage where they want to minimize how much they are exposed to the media," said Paul Friedman, vice president of news at CBS, the network that scored one of the three major Palin interviews. He shrugged at what could be learned in a news conference that couldn't in a one-on-one interview. "I just don't think it is that cosmic of an issue. We'll see more of the candidates soon. Just wait for the debates."

To counter Friedman, Garofoli cited female journalists and pundits who complain that Palin is being overly sheltered. Aside from PBS's Judy Woodruff and CNN's Campbell Brown, Garofoli noted the complaints of conservative Kathleen Parker, labeling the syndicated columnist, and rightfully so, by her ideological label.

But when it came to labeling a liberal critic of Palin, the chief of a liberal feminist organization was treated as a non-partisan observer, even though her organization was co-founded by Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem:

"The McCain campaign has discovered it has a major problem," said Carol Jenkins, president of the Women's Media Center. "Increasingly, it has become clear that she doesn't have a grasp of the issues. If I were John McCain, I'd be doing the same thing with her."

Among the members of WMC's board of directors are ultra-liberal feminist acolytes such as Gloria Steinem -- who, you may recall, penned an anti-Palin column that was syndicated in a Saudi newspapers -- as well as actress and liberal activist Jane Fonda, and CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans.