NEW YORK — News executives Thursday tried to shake off the excoriations of the media emanating from the Republican National Convention, defending their coverage of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as responsible and evenhanded.
While top television network officials and newspaper editors largely dismissed the critiques as partisan rhetoric, some fretted that charges of media bias had reached a new and disturbing level.
"I really do take exception to it," NBC News President Steve Capus said. "These terms get thrown around in an awfully cavalier way, and they're incredibly damaging. We're in the business where words matter, and those are awfully, awfully strong accusations."
Speaker after speaker pounded the media Wednesday night, accusing news organizations of slanted and sexist coverage in their reporting about the 44-year-old Alaska governor and her family.
"I'd like to thank the elite media for doing something that quite frankly I wasn't sure could be done: and that's unifying the Republican Party and all of America in support of Sen. [John] McCain and Gov. Palin," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to wild cheers in Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. "The reporting of the past few days has proved tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert."
The angry denunciations by Republican leaders spotlighted a dominant theme of the 2008 presidential campaign: the charge that the news media are a biased referee. It began in the primaries, when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign complained about sexist coverage, and has continued through the general election with accusations that the media are in Democratic nominee Barack Obama's sway.
Attacking the media is not a new political tactic, of course. Still, the intensity of the complaints rose to such a pitch this week that they dominated the narrative of the race.
At nearly every turn, McCain's campaign challenged the reporting on Palin, particularly questions raised about her 17-year-old pregnant daughter, Bristol. Senior McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said the media were displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness," and Cindy McCain called the coverage "insulting."
David Westin, president of ABC News, said the intense focus on Palin -- who was not widely known before McCain tapped her as his running mate last week -- exacerbated a perception that the media were piling on.
