Sarah Palin, fact checking, and Soapy Smith

I stopped purchasing the Anchorage Daily News a long time ago. I take great delight in the calls I get from telemarketers for the ADN when they solicit their paper and when I tell them I’m not interested, they always ask why. It’s then that I get a chance to tell them about being a liberal rag I won’t pay money for. Not to say I don’t ever read it, because of course I want to know what agenda they’re pushing – I’m just not going to support their cause monetarily.

Recently I was reading an article regarding former ADN writer Craig Medred on the website Conservatives4Palin. It caught my eye because it described a flap regarding Medred and his attempts to disprove a certain portion of Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue” regarding the famous Alaskan character, “Soapy” Smith. Sarah’s family lived in Skagway for a time and no doubt she heard, and her father may have even taught, some of the history of this character. She mentions it briefly in her book as part of the history of the state. My husband and I had a chance to visit Skagway, Alaska in the summer of 2008 while on vacation, and I remember hearing the story of Soapy, his life, and his death. We even visited Frank Ried's gravesite which is a huge tourist attraction.

History has a way of rewriting itself, and often it is up to family members to set the record straight. Wild tales of shoot outs and caricatures of individuals of the time abound, but recently a book was written by Jeff Smith, descendant of Soapy, in an attempt to set the record straight.

Why does this matter you ask, and where am I going with this? Medred has chosen to dispute the story as written in Sarah’s book. As a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News and Palin detractor with a history of negative stories against Sarah, Medred’s personal history might give us some background into his agenda.

After attending several higher level institutions of learning, Medred landed in Fairbanks, Alaska and enrolled at the University of Fairbanks. According to an article in the Alaska Press, Medred was stated as saying, “UAF got so fed up with me, they said, ‘here, take a degree and leave.’ So I took a degree [in journalism] and left…” An auspicious beginning to his journalism career. He eventually landed at the ADN and set his sights on Sarah Palin. He has been a Sarah detractor ever since. Since the release of “Going Rogue” Craig Medred has been bent on disproving the published version of events in Sarah’s book. Craig, Craig, haven’t you got anything better to do? Well, maybe not.


In the summer of 2009, Medred left ADN for what was described as a “funemployment” furlough as mentioned in the Anchorage Press article. ADN is a McClatchy paper and bleeding profusely, it’s readership scraping the bottom of the barrel. Many at ADN have been placed on furloughs or “outwrite” laid off, including Medred. Now that Medred has some time on his hands, how better to whittle away the time than to slam Sarah Palin’s book? As if he could find nothing better to tear down, the story of Soapy became his target. One might think he would want to disprove more important passages from her book but I am just speculating that Medred thought this would be an easy way to tear down Sarah without anyone disputing his “fact-checking.”

Enter Jeff Smith, Soapy’s descendant and author of “Alias Soapy Smith, the Life and Death of a Scoundrel.” As Jeff notes on his website, Medred has been busy trying to disprove Sarah’s version of the event in her book. Jeff notes that Medred is wrong, not Sarah. From Jeff’s website article titled “Sarah Palin/Soapy Smith/Craig Medred: It just keeps getting worse”:

Mr. Medred's "clarification" is filled with errors but truth in history is not his goal. Disproving Sarah Palin's book is his goal.

As with any of those Sarah Palin “haters,” I believe Medred’s negativity regarding Sarah’s book stems out of jealousy. Here is a man who is on a “funemployment” furlough from ADN, having nothing better to do than to tear down her book, a book that has been on the best seller’s list for weeks, an accomplishment Medred has not achieved. While Sarah and Medred have a similar background in that they attended various higher level institutions eventually obtaining degrees in journalism, Sarah Palin has reached heights and accomplished more than Medred can ever hope to.

Sarah Palin’s version of events surrounding Soapy Smith and detailed in her book is accurate as confirmed by Jeff Smith, his descendant. Why we are even having this conversation is a conundrum in itself, another of those Sarah attacks that makes you scratch your head and say, “What?” Enough said.
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To see this and other conservative articles, please visit my website Finding Myself In Alaska

God Don't Like Ugly; Calling Out Craig Medred

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

There's an old expression that goes like this: "God don't like ugly." I could not count the times I heard that growing up. It was used as a rebuke by the adults in my life whenever I did something they deemed inappropriate. As I got older, and made wiser choices, the need to be reminded of this "truth" diminished. However, not everyone grows up and makes wiser choices.

Exhibit A: Alaska reporter, Craig Medred

Medred's fascination with discrediting the Palin family is...well, ugly. What's it this time? Well, this time he fancies himself a Going Rogue fact-checker, and in that he's in bad company already. However, Medred clearly isn't capable of checking anything because he can't get his facts straight. For this, he gets called out.

Mel Bryant, my colleague over at Conservatives4Palin, points this out in an article called "Truth in Reporting." Bryant exposes, not only Medred's ridiculous preoccupation with "checking on" Governor Palin, but also his gross inability to do so with any success.

Bryant writes:

Now, Jeff Smith, author of Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, is a bit annoyed with Medred. You may recall that Governor Palin mentioned a man named "Soapy" Smith in her book as part of a larger passage about the history of Alaska and some of its characters. The paragraph in Going Rogue that mentions "Soapy" says:

After his adventures in Tombstone, the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp came north and spent a few years in Nome during the gold rush. On the other side of the law was "Soapy" Smith, a Wild West crime boss whose tight-knit gang moved from Colorado to Skagway. They made a mint cheating gold miners out of their cash. It finally caught up with Soapy Smith: he was killed in a shoot-out with a vigilante gang.

As part of a larger piece at Alaska Dispatch, Medred fact checked this paragraph. In this check, Medred said that the historical record states that "Soapy" was not killed in a shoot-out with a gang, but was instead killed in a scuffle that turned into a gunfight with a man named Frank Reid. Reid, he said, shot "Soapy". Among others, he cited a passage from Jeff Smith's book to bolster this version of events. According to Smith, however, Medred was off base.

Smith said (addressing Medred):

My name is Jeff Smith, author of Alias Soapy Smith: The life and Death of a Scoundrel and the website Alias Soapy Smith. It is important to me that people know that you took the facts from my book and my website completely out of context and horribly and incorrectly stated my conclusions about the Shootout on Juneau Wharf in which my great-grandfather, Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith was killed. I can only surmise that you either did not read the book and/or website or that you intentionally left out major important portions of one or both in order to show that Sarah Palin was incorrect in her statements on page 13 regarding Soapy Smith's fight with vigilantes.

Had you read the book and/or my website you would have clearly noted in my book (pages 532-580) and on my website (HERE) that Frank Reid was NOT the man who killed my great grandfather, and that in fact, another member of the vigilante guards present joined in the fight and wrestled Soapy's rifle away from him and turned it on an unarmed Soapy and shot him in the chest killing him instantly. Whether you agreed or disagreed with Soapy's ways is irrelevant to the fact that Soapy was shot while wounded and unarmed, which in most civilized communities is murder. The vigilantes hid this fact from the courts in order to save their own new found power.

Smith attempted to get a correction from Medred who eventually rewrote the article, removing the citation for Smith's book. Medred also issued a clarification citing Catherine Holder Spudes. Smith isn't particularly impressed with Medred's clarification:

Mr. Medred's "clarification" is filled with errors but truth in history is not his goal. Disproving Sarah Palin's book is his goal.

Read the full C4P article here.