September 7, 2008, 1:23 pm
Oprah Says No to Palin, and Gets an Earful
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Oprah Winfrey has said she will not interview Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the hottest political star in the firmament, and the decision is drawing negative reviews from many fans of the doyenne of daytime television.
A group of Republican women in Florida has announced a boycott of Ms. Winfrey’s television show and called for cancellations of subscriptions to her magazine, “O: The Oprah Magazine.”
And the decision to spurn Ms. Palin — who has remained sequestered from the media and has declined multiple requests for interviews from major news organizations — is prompting many Oprah fans to post complaints on her Web site.
It is not clear whether Ms. Palin had even asked to go on Oprah’s famous couch, but it is clear that Ms. Winfrey doesn’t want her. The campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, declined to comment, but Ms. Winfrey’s rejection of the Republican vice presidential nominee is playing right into the storyline being advanced by Republican operatives — that the media is biased against them.
Ms. Winfrey issued a statement Friday night saying that while Ms. Palin would be a “fantastic” interview, she had pledged after endorsing Senator Barack Obama last year that she would not use her TV show to promote political candidates. Honoring that pledge, she declined to interview Senator Hillary Clinton during the primaries while she battled Mr. Obama for the Democratic nomination.
Ms. Winfrey said she would be happy to interview Ms. Palin, but only after the November election. Her statement came in response to an account on the Drudge Report that her staff was sharply divided over the merits of Oprah’s interviewing Ms. Palin.
“Half of her staff really wants Sarah Palin on,” an anonymous “insider” told Drudge. “Oprah’s website is getting tons of requests to put her on, but Oprah and a couple of her top people are adamantly against it because of Obama.”
The Drudge account added: “One executive close to Winfrey is warning any Palin ban could ignite a dramatic backlash!”
Ms. Winfrey then issued the following statement:
The item in today’s Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over.
Whether the Drudge report was correct about someone close to Oprah warning about a backlash, a backlash seems to be developing. Officials from the Florida Federation of Republican Women told The Miami Herald that they would boycott the show and cancel their subscriptions to “O.”
Women in Florida helped build Oprah into the icon she is today,” Linda Ivell, president of the federation, told the Herald. “We are deeply disappointed in Ms. Winfrey’s decision to sit out the greatest political moment in the history of women since suffrage.”
Fans on Oprah’s Web site are annoyed and disappointed.
“Oprah needs to learn about ‘fair and balanced reporting,’ “writes one. “She does not have to support the Republican ticket, but if she wants to call her self a good reporter/talk show host, she needs to have both sides on her show. Not to mention a women. Shame on you Oprah, your [sic] getting a lot of your women viewers mad.”
“Oprah, you can not deny that Sarah Palin is a strong candidate & an inspiration to many!!” wrote another. “You have been an inspiration to me! If you truly want to move away from the association of your show as a political platform….balance out the equation!”
“Woohoo!” wrote yet another. “I agree! Oprah is no longer welcome in my home either. She is not the woman that she had us believe for so many years. I am thoroughly disappointed.”
Some wrote that Ms. Winfrey could do whatever she wanted with her show, pointing out that even a boycott or a decline in ratings would not personally hurt Ms. Winfrey, who is a billionaire.
Ms. Winfrey angered many of her fans last year when she ventured into politics for the first time with her endorsement of Mr. Obama. The demographics of her audience was a closer fit to the profile of the typical supporter of Hillary Clinton than of Barack Obama, and may also be closer to the typical supporter of Sarah Palin: As of last fall, her daytime audience of 8.6 million viewers were 75 percent women; more than half were older than 50; about 44 percent made less than $40,000 a year, and about 25 percent had no more than a high school diploma, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Whatever the damage to Ms. Winfrey’s own standing among her fans, there is no denying her influence. A study earlier this year by two economists determined that her endorsement of Mr. Obama gave him a boost of about one million votes in the primaries and caucuses. Their conclusions were based partly on a county-by-county analysis of subscriptions to “O: The Oprah Magazine” and sales figures for books included in her book club.
3 p.m. Update: Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has agreed to a television interview, with ABC News, according to The Associated Press. ABC’s Charlie Gibson is scheduled to interview Ms. Palin in Alaska sometime later this week, The A.P. said, citing anonymous sources.
The network has had no comment so far.
A drumbeat of pressure has been mounting from news organizations for interviews with the vice presidential nominee as they have begun to dig into her background, but the McCain campaign has been keeping her away from reporters.
Mr. McCain, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” today, said he expected Ms. Palin would start doing interviews “in the next few days.”
His campaign manager, Rick Davis, who spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” said the campaign would make her available according to its own needs.
“She’s not scared to answer questions,” Mr. Davis said. “But you know what? We run our campaign, not the news media. And we’ll do things on our timetable.”
He added: “Why would we want to throw Sarah Palin into a cycle of piranhas called the news media that have nothing better to ask questions about than her personal life and her children? So until at which point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/oprah-says-no-to-palin-and-gets-an-earful/?scp=2&sq=oprah&st=cse
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