Why did the press ignore the firebombing of Sarah Palin’s church?

June 11, 5:06 AMNorfolk Crime ExaminerDave Gibson

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The fire-damaged Wasilla Bible Church

On the night of December 12, 2008, the Wasilla Bible Church was set ablaze by arsonists.

At the time, several women and children were inside working on a craft project. They were alerted to the fire when the alarm began sounding, by that time, the front of the church was engulfed in flames.

Firefighters began arriving shortly after 9:40 p.m. It took crews from several local communities until 5 a.m. to fully extinguish the blaze.

The fire caused close to $1 million in damages.

It did not take long for investigators to determine that the fire was an act of arson. An official report claimed that an accelerant was found to have been “poured on and around the outside of the Wasilla Bible Church in multiple places.”

In fact, the entrance as well as the exit doors had been doused with the flammable substance in an obvious attempt to see that no one was able to escape the burning building.

It would have been obvious to the arsonists that the church was occupied( I use the multiple term because it would have been nearly impossible for one person to spread the massive amount of accelerant used at multiple locations around the 35,000 sq. foot building, particularly in 20-below temperatures.). There were lights on inside, and several cars parked near the front entrance.

The attack on the Wasilla Bible church was much more than an arson, it was in fact an act of attempted murder.

To date, no arrests have been made in connection with the case.

Of course, the most glaring motive as to why someone would set fire to a church in tiny Wasilla is the fact that the 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin attends service at the church, and in light of the incredible amount of hatred which has been directed at Gov. Palin as well as to her family, it is a pretty safe assumption that a message was being sent.

Given the fact that a church was attacked close to Christmas would seem to be newsworthy enough, but considering the fact that the church attended by Gov. Palin was set fire in such a manner as to kill those inside at the time should have warranted heavy media coverage. However, the only network which devoted any time to the story was Fox News.

A quick internet search on the church fire will yield some coverage on a few obscure websites, but beyond Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren’s coverage which lasted only a few days, there was no major media attention given to the crime.

So why would the press ignore the story?

In my opinion, the following could be a few of the reasons:

1) The Wasilla Bible Church has an all-white congregation (While the oft race-baiting press is always quick to cover a predominantly black church being fire-bombed in an attempt to re-inflame the hostilities of the civil rights era, coverage of white victims in the very Republican state of Alaska may evoke sympathy for the wrong side of the aisle.

2) Gov. Sarah Palin and her family have been the target of vile attacks from the mainstream media. Gov. Palin has been demonized by the press, and every attempt has been made to discredit her and humiliate her children. CBS‘s ‘Late Show’ host David Letterman recently went so far as to describe Gov. Palin as a “slutty flight attendant,” and even suggested that her 14-year-old daughter had been “knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez” during a Yankees game.

3) Perhaps, the most important reason why the press has chosen not to cover the story is that during the months after Palin was chosen as John McCain’s running mate, teams of Democratic Party operatives swarmed the Wasilla area in an attempt to uncover any dirt that could be used against the Governor.

Could it be that a few of the more zealous Democrat operatives stayed-on and took their devotion to party a step further, and actually set the blaze?…Such a discovery would be disastrous to the left. Faced with this possibility the mainstream media may have decided not to explore the crime too deeply.

Could anyone imagine that no media coverage would have been given, if it had been Barack Obama’s church in Chicago which had been firebombed?

Instead, it was Sarah Palin’s church in Wasilla that was the subject of a terrorist act, and the crime has been completely ignored by the press.

As a commenter on Sarah Palin’s blog said recently: “This is an ugly case of media bias again directed at Sarah Palin and the church is quite literally collateral damage. It was the media attacks and attention on this church that may have made it a target and, if that is true, the media fanned the flames of hate. To follow up that irresponsibility by remaining silent after the crime is all but despicable."

Anytime a church is attacked, it is an attack on our constitutional Freedom of Religion, and the press has an obligation to cover the story, and hopefully cast light on the vile subjects responsible for the crime. They have this obligation, regardless of the race, creed, or even party affiliation of the church’s congregants.