Sarah Palin on Thursday blasted The Associated Press as “absolute jerks” and “biased” for choosing to run an unflattering photo of Mitt Romney this week.
Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Palin about the Romney photo in light of the former vice presidential nominee’s own experience with a picture in 2008.
Romney did a “nice thing” by offering to do a photo op with the school children and a “photographer shot a picture of him that is unflattering and looks ridiculous,” Kelly said.
“Do you think that this is media bias or is it a forgivable mistake?” the Fox host asked Palin about the AP photo selections.
“Hell yeah, it’s media bias,” Palin said. “And it’s also… when you consider what the response to Mitt Romney’s photo is – which is degrading and Associated Press, they’re jerks for having run that, even with the caption. I mean, absolute jerks and biased to try and taint some people’s view of Mitt Romney by running this photo. It’s embarrassing.”
“But when you consider people’s responses to what this picture is, I don’t remember a whole lot of people getting too wee wee-ed up about the photos that were run of me four years ago, including the young men that looked like they were looking up legs or up my skirt, even,” Palin added. “Last night even on Bill O’Reilly, I saw that he did a piece on this segment, I don’t know if he did a piece on that when it happened to me or maybe some other women over the years, so I think that it’s still kind of still a tell-tale sign of some little bit of [genderism] in our society, that we really need to overcome so that we can all move forward.”
As the interview with Palin wrapped, Kelly added, “you’ve got to feel for the little girl who is pictured there in a way that I’m sure her parents didn’t anticipate.”
The AP changed the caption on Tuesday from “Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students of Fairfield Elementary School, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va.” to “Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students of Fairfield Elementary School, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va. A student, right, reacts as she realizes Romney will crouch down directly in front of her and her classmates for the group photo” after criticism of their photo choice.
AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said the AP “fell short of our own standards” with the original caption.
{Politico}
She’s right!