Northwest News
Palin says interviews didn't match Idaho journalism training
04:42 PM PDT on Thursday, October 2, 2008
BOISE - Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin told a radio host that some of the questions she received in interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric were a different kind of journalism than she learned at the University of Idaho.
AP
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Sept. 15, 2008.
"I have a degree in journalism also, so it surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago," Palin told host Hugh Hewitt.
Both Gibson and Couric put Palin through her paces on a variety of issues, with several of her answers becoming popular fodder for YouTube and cable news shows.
"I'm going to take those shots and those pop quizzes and just say that's okay, those are good testing grounds,” she told Hewitt.
“They can continue on in that mode. That's good. That makes somebody work even harder. It makes somebody be even clearer and more articulate in their positions. So really I don't fight it. I invite it."
University of Idaho journalism professor Abubakar Alhassan told Conde Nast Portfolio that he didn’t see any ethical violations in the questions asked by Gibson and Couric.
"I think the media that's had the opportunity to interview her was just giving her that opportunity to explain to people the controversies out there she hasn't spoken about," he said. "I don't think they asked any 'gotcha' questions. I don't think a question about which it turns out she doesn't know much is a 'gotcha' question."
A Director of the School of Journalism at UI Kenton Bird told Porfolio that the school tries to provide its students a broad perspective on journalism.
“In all of our courses, we emphasize critical thinking and the ability to analyze information from a variety of sources,” Bird said. “With ethics in particular, we don't provide the 'right' answers to particular situations -- we provide a framework of questions so that students can come to conclusions on their own.”
Palin graduated from the University of Idaho's journalism program in 1987. She was born in Idaho but spent most of her adult life in Alaska.
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