I'm not sold on Politico.Rolled out by Washington insiders as an attempt to stanch the bleeding of the print media, a sort of internet/print hybrid, they've been hungry in this, their first year.
Perhaps a bit TOO hungry.
The first big "scoop" was, of course, Ben Smith's revelation that John Edwards was going to DROP OUT of the presidential race because of his wife's cancer.
(Whoops!)
The next big scoop was Mike Allen's revelation that Rudy Giuliani had been caching his travel expenses in obscure accounts ... purportedly to hide his visits to his mistress. You might recall the media firestorm about it, on November 30.
Only one problem: Turned out not to be exactly true. Giuliani wasn't using the "secret" accounts to visit his mistress (now his wife). But the whiff of scandal was what was important, and, given the "catch" involved, I wasn't in the least suspicious. (Mike Allen had covered Giuliani for the New York Times in an earlier reportorial incarnation, the newspaper which, coincidentally, repudiated his story.)But then, Mike Allen shows up with ANOTHER "scoop" on December 21: Witnesses had come forward claiming to have SEEN George Romney (Mitt's dad) marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 saying, in part:
Basore said she was very angry about how the issue has been covered on cable television.
“This very arrogant guy on TV questioned Mitt Romney, and I marched with them,” Basore said. “I hope that the campaign demands an apology. I want him to publicly apologize to me. That was a personal insult, and an insult to Mitt Romney.”
Basore said she called the campaign, and the campaign supplied her contact information.
Another witness, Ashby Richardson, 64, of Massachusetts gave the campaign a similar account.
“I’m just appalled that the news picks this stuff up and say it didn’t happen,” Richardson, now a data-collection consultant, said by phone. “The press is being disingenuous in terms of reporting what actually happened. I remember it vividly. I was only 15 or 20 feet from where both of them were.”
And, suddenly, you might have noticed that the "scandal" went away.
Except ...
The documentary evidence was clear. The Martin Luther King, Jr. papers' curator, researchers, newspapers, etc. all failed to turn up any documentary linkage, other than a 1967 David S. Broder citation that got the DATE of the march itself wrong.
Great "spin control." And the admission that the Romney campaign SENT the witnesses to Mike Allen to "break" the story.
But I'm not buying it.
-SNIP-
Because Mike Allen says so? Don't make me laugh. He's overstepped his bounds as a reporter and drifted into partisan land. But then, he seems to have pretty straightforward button-down conservative GOP and newspaper credentials. From his bio on Politico:
Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times. Before moving to The Times, he did stints in the Richmond and Alexandria bureaus of The Washington Post. Allen grew up in Orange County, Calif., and has a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, where he majored in politics and journalism.
So, I have to wonder why he's pimping so hard for a point of view.
Mike Allen is the chief political correspondent for Politico. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000.
OK, he's hobnobbed in what seems to be Establishment Republican circles for a long time (you don't cover 'em that long if they hate your coverage, especially in the Bush White House). So we can draw some inferences there. And from the stickers on his suitcase.
But I weight documentary evidence above partisan (remember, they CONTACTED the Romney campaign, not a reporter) recollections spoon-fed to a seemingly sympathetic reporter. The Giuliani "scoop" seems logical. But the Romney "scoop" calls both into question.
Who is Mike Allen working for?
more........
http://thekatrinacrat.blogspot.com/2007/12/for-whose-campaign-is-mike-allen.html
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