Palin Jousts With Local Press Over Family Coverage

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is complaining about press coverage directly to her local newspaper, but the paper’s editor isn’t backing down.

Palin e-mailed the Anchorage Daily News’s editor Pat Dougherty and publisher Pat Doyle to point out “mistakes” that she’s found in the newspaper’s coverage of her. Palin took issue with the description of her future son-in-law Levi Johnston as a “high-school dropout,” with a story suggesting she had connections to Johnston’s arrested mother, and with the paper’s pursuit of rumors that she’s not actually the mother of her youngest son.

Dougherty replied on his http://www.adn.com/crime/v-printer/story/633751.html>blog. He noted other reports showing Johnston was a high-school dropout and he pointed out that his paper hadn’t suggested any connection between Palin and Levi Johnston’s mother, Sherry Johnston, who is facing felony drug charges. Dougherty, however, acknowledged that his paper had followed up on rumors that Palin wasn’t the mother of her youngest son, but he said that newspaper only started reporting on them months after they first surfaced on blogs and that the newspaper was working under the assumption that it was a false conspiracy theory. Dougherty also noted that his paper never published a story about them.

Read a part of Palin’s e-mail to the newspaper below. Her message and Dougherty’s full response have been posted on his blog.

From Palin’s e-mail:

Hello Mr. Doyle and Mr. Dougherty!

Please, say it aint so: did you really allow a story to run in your paper today claiming Levi Johnston is a high school drop out? Did I read that right?

And did you really print a story last week suggesting I had any connection with Sherry Johnston’s activities in the past six months or so and you won’t correct the story? Did I read that right?

And is your paper really still pursuing the sensational lie that I am not Trig’s mother? Is it true you have a reporter still bothering my state office, my very busy doctor (who’s already set the record straight for you), and the school district, in pursuit of your ridiculous conspiracy?

And, oh, I could go on…