Our Friends at Fox News

I have learned some information today that is quite an eye-opener. I hope you all have your fortifying glasses of chianti gripped firmly in hand when you read this - as I have while writing this.

In early 2008 an Israeli filmmaker named Frank Elan set out to make a documentary on exceptional women in the world. He asked Sarah Palin if he could include her and she said yes.

He followed her around for four days (one source says three) in early April, 2008. I do not know exactly which four days but we do know that April 8th was one of the days, so we are talking within ten days of the time she gave birth. After the announcement of her selection by John McCain, word spread quickly in the media of the existence of this footage. Ultimately, Frank Elan sold the footage to Fox News, who also signed him on as a commentator.

I have not been able to determine if the footage acquired by Fox is everything that Elan shot in three/four days of following her (which could easily be many hours of raw footage) or if what they purchased the rights to was an edited version, something he had already put together for potential inclusion in his documentary, which would then be much less, but still probably 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

Greta Van Susteren used some small pieces of it in a bio she did of Palin. Here is a link to it on the Fox News site. For some reason I can't find it on YouTube. Watch for some of Elan's footage right at the one minute point and again at the three minute point. There is also more from Frank Elan of her talking in a black jacket and multi-colored scarf - look for the polar bear pin - but it is all from the neck up.

Beyond this very limited use of the footage, I cannot see that Fox has used any of it. According to Elan, the footage includes: "I have her with her family, making sandwiches for her daughter after school, watching television. I spoke to her husband and asked him about how it feels to be married to such a dominant woman. I have the two of them talking about private matters. I was able to catch very intimate moments on film. She even played the flute for me." In short, stuff that Fox would love.

So why hasn't Fox showed any of this touching footage? We have one other clip of this footage, from an English language Israeli website. It contains a sequence in which Palin meets her daughter Piper at the schoolbus stop, and we get one brief - but pretty clear - full front shot of her.

I have taken screen shots of this and will post them in my follow up post. But I encourage you all to watch the video which is here. And here is a link to the article about the shoot.

And then I would suggest to you that just maybe the reason that Fox appears to have trash-canned the rest of this footage is that this is not video of someone who gave birth to a six pound baby ten days later.