Sarah Palin's Alaska: Palin Slams Joe McGinniss in TLC Show Premiere
In the pilot of her new reality show on TLC, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the former Alaska governor wasted no time criticizing journalist Joe McGinniss, who over the summer moved into the house next door to Palin while researching a book on her, for what she described as an "intrusion" and an "invasion of [the family's] privacy."
"Where I like to do a lot of my writing and researching - especially on a beautiful day - is outside, on our slab, where I get to take in the beauty of the lake," Palin said during the first minutes of the show, referring to a patio-like slab of cement in the family's backyard, which faces Alaska's Lake Lucille.
"Our behavior certainly has changed this summer because of this new neighbor," she continued.
"Our summer fun has kind of been taken away from us because of a new neighbor next door who's writing a hit piece on my wife," added Todd Palin, Sarah Palin's husband, who built a 14-foot fence between the two houses shortly after McGinniss moved in.
McGinniss, the author several best-selling books, has said repeatedly that he has done nothing to violate the family's privacy.
"I am not sitting here with binoculars trained on her yard," McGinniss said in a May interview with the New York Times. "I am not taking video or photos and I found two people in my yard who were walking over trying to take a picture over the fence and I told them that they had to leave, so in a way, I am serving as a kind of a buffer."
Nevertheless, Palin repeatedly referenced the journalist on the show's Sunday premiere, and warned her daughter Piper not to let him have "the pleasure" of taking any pictures of her.
"Is he taking pictures? Don't give him the pleasure of taking a picture," Palin warns, as the family troops inside after a salmon-fishing expedition. "He was stuck inside writing an ugly book - see, we one-upped him. We had a good day and he's stuck in his house."
In the show, McGinniss (whose face is blurred out, and who is never mentioned by name) is pictured sitting on an upstairs deck reading a book. There is no apparent camera in sight.
According to a report in the Anchorage Press, McGinniss said he neither knew about nor consented to being filmed for the episode, and demanded that the network remove the footage of him.
TLC did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.
