Palin Attacks Media for Her Treatment During Election Race

Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska who was propelled on to the world stage as Republican vice-presidential candidate, has come out with guns blazing against the media, whom she blames for giving her unfair and class-biased treatment during the election campaign.

In an interview with a rightwing documentary film-maker, Palin attacks local and national newspapers, TV network news, anonymous bloggers and stand-up comics for presenting a distorted image of herself, her family and her Alaskan administration. Not even staff working for the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, escape her wrath.

In the sharpest attack, she predicts that the media will wear kid gloves in comparison when they talk about Caroline Kennedy, John F Kennedy's daughter, who is campaigning for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat. "As we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove there is a class issue here that is a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy," she says.

Kennedy herself has come under considerable media criticism after stumbling through a series of interviews, including one in which she used the phrase "you know" 138 times.

In embittered comments to the talk radio host John Ziegler, who is making a documentary that seeks to show that media malpractice lay behind the election of Barack Obama in November, Palin said she became the victim of "absurd" gossip. Blogs were rife with the rumor that she was not the mother of her infant child Trig, born four months before her nomination - rumors that she said persisted today.

"It's a sad state of affairs if the mainstream media is going to rely on anonymous bloggers as the source of their information. Very scary," she said.

Palin confirmed reports from the time that relations were tense between her and the media handlers working for McCain. She blames them for subjecting her to several interviews with the CBS newscaster Katie Couric, even after the first encounter did not go well. "Going back for more was not a wise decision," she says.

The Couric interviews helped sustain a view that Palin was naive, ignorant and ill-equipped for presidential office.

In the most embarrassing exchange, Palin appeared unable to answer a Couric question about what newspapers she read. She now says she may have been "too flippant" in answering that question, but insists she interpreted it as implying Alaskans did not read at all. "Of course I read newspapers! I read publications. I spent a lot of time reading our local papers - because that's my job to know the business of Alaska, but also USA Today yes, and New York Times."

She noted that Couric's ratings had risen after the interviews, and that Tina Fey, the comedian who impersonated her on Saturday Night Live, had won an entertainer of the year award.

Ziegler plays her a clip from one of the sketches in which Fey, as Palin, says: "I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers." Palin lashed out at the sketch - a dig at Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol. "Cool, fine, come and attack me, but when you make a suggestion like that that attacks a kid, it kills me, it kills me."

Asked whether the bruising experience would put her off in future, she says: "I would do it again, knowing there is great need in our country for reform", further fueling speculation about a possible Palin presidential run in 2012.