I suspect that I am like a lot of people, in that while I'm not enthusiastic about Sarah Palin's present prospects as a leading voice for the Republican Party, I can readily recognize the complete hatchet job the media has done on her. It's been ridiculous.

In that vein, Glenn Reynolds links to a post by Ann Alhouse where Professor Althouse argues that CBS should "release the unedited video" of Katie Couric's 2008 interview with Palin in order to judge the validity of Palin's assertions that the interview was selectively edited in order to put Palin in a bad light.

Professor Reynolds also links to a piece he wrote in September 2008, where he wrote: (emphasis added)

If I were a candidate, I think I'd bring my own camera to interviews, shoot the whole thing and post the unedited raw video on the Web.

Reynolds' piece echoes the lesson I learned the hard way in the first (and only) statewide political race I worked on, when, as the press secretary for Texas Supreme Court candidate Steve Smith in 2002, I spent most of my time trying to correct the false and misleading quotes attributed to Smith and reported by the Texas media, much of it stemming from a one-on-one interview misquoting and severely taking out of context Smith's answers.

While Smith won the election, the most important lesson I learned from that 2002 race was: Never, ever, ever allow a candidate to be interviewed by the press one on one without some sort of independent record of the interview, be it an audio or a video recording.

That experience partially led to the decision to start this blog in September 2004, and was the major reason for its name, The New Editor.