FOX News | Daily Beast
GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann told reporters at a campaign stop on Wednesday that she won’t give the media what it wants: “They want to see two girls come together and have a mud-wrestling fight.” Bachmann reiterated there is room in the Republican nominating contest for Sarah Palin, who she called a friend last month in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Bachmann has been credited with handling journalists differently than Palin, who has frequently criticized the “lamestream media.” Bachmann told Kirsten Powers:
“The media is what the media is. It’s part of the territory. A person has to accept that there are difficult questions and unfair questions and it is a part of this process and it is what it is.”
Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman says after her strong showing in the recent Republican debate and a top spot a new Iowa poll, “Reporters have anointed the 55-year-old Minnesota congresswoman as the flavor of the month.” But it won’t last.
“It’s amazing how we in the media swung from saying, ‘Bachmann is an idiot’ before the debate and now ‘Bachmann can do no wrong,’ ” Melinda Henneberger told Friedman. (Henneberger, a political writer for Time, was editor of Politics Daily, a site I wrote for in its last few months.)
Sensitive to critiques of how the media covered Hillary Clinton’s candidacy during the 2008 presidential contest, some are vigilant about potentially sexist coverage of Bachmann. Fox News notes that an aide to Nancy Pelosi tweeted Wednesday:
“Bachmann – she’d never get my vote, but she has my ire at how the media is treating her. They’d never treat a man like this week of announcement.”
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