Salon’s Glenn Greenwald takes a long look today at a phenomenon that he and a few other bloggers have repeatedly observed. Namely, the online politics site Politico has a distinctly right-wing world view.
This is a simple fact, just as Fox News’ right-wing slant is plain as day, even though these news organizations don’t come out and admit the reality.
And the Politico editors’ disinclination to acknowledge the way they see — and report — the news has a secondary effect. They have accomplices in the traditional press. I’ve been looking for some hint in big newspapers (forget broadcast news in this respect) that Politico’s reports frequently have a Republican viewpoint, but haven’t found one so far.
Now, I have no problem with news organizations having a world view, and I do read Politico, which for all its superficiality sometimes has truly deep reporting. The problem is that most traditional ones pretend they don’t. I’m glad sites like Politico exist, but disappointed that they don’t make overtly clear the prism through which they see things.
Transparency would help. In the absence of that, deploy your own skepticism. That’s what Greenwald does, so relentlessly, and so should we all.