Sarah Palin whines to the Anchorage Daily News that too much of the reportage on her record was "based on misinformation." An example?

But just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn't even been written when I was the mayor.

When I was in Wasilla to look into her record, I never found any evidence that Palin tried to ban Harry Potter from the local library (she seemed to be more concerned about a local pastor's book written for closeted gays).

But the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was published in 1997.

Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002. By the time her term of office expired, four of the Potter books had been published.

It is true that the Potter books had not been published at the time there was a discussion of bannings at the Wasilla library, which took place in January 1997. And the whole Potter claim is based on a spurious e-mail anyway.

But that's the real problem with Palin citing this as an example of bad media reporting, even beyond the fact that her "proof" is afactual: It never made it into any serious media account of her record that I can find, other than to dismiss it.

Palin seems to be trying divert attention from the serious reporting on her record by building up a strawman about nonexistent reportage.