The Politico - now a trusted Yahoo News source
It wasn’t that long ago that The Politico came on the scene, bolstered by roughly 75,000 links from Matt Drudge. They were a right-wing site, and everybody knew it, regardless of how often they denied it.
While debuting with prominent beltway pundits, The Politico quickly set the tone for what they were all about - by “breaking” the story that John Edwards received a $400 haircut.
Nowadays, The Politico seems to have given up pretense and has embraced the fact that it’s a right-wing noise machine. Stories on yesterday’s front page at Politico?
– Urban issues get short shrift (”Despite two Democratic presidential candidates with urban interests, mayors and experts say too little attention paid to them.”)
– Taxes: Obamas prospered as he soared
– Indictment: Iraq paid for junket
– McCain: We can’t do whatever we want (”John McCain calls for more humility but a stay-the-course approach to Iraq war.”)
– Bush-haters won’t stop McCain (”In an ideas column, Brown contends president isn’t the albatross around McCain’s neck many people think.”)
– Racial problems transcend Wright (”Voting patterns show Obama’s uneven record on getting beyond race.”)
– McCain’s approach to foreign policy is a unique blend
– The Clinton myth: The backstory (”Her campaign rests on a game of make-believe.”)
So really, they can say they’re centrist, or non-partisan, or Independent, or Klingon, or whatever they like. But it’s a right-wing Drudgian machine at its heart. And now, Yahoo News prominently features stories from The Politico, with a front-page link to the hard-hitting story “Southern Dem warns party to avert disaster,” a 1,300-word epic about Tennessee governor Phil Bresden, who’s certain that the Obama-Clinton battle will be doom for Democrats.
So, while Conservatives scream in faux horror when Google won’t adorn their home page with some type of homage to Easter, they hopefully should feel more comfortable with Yahoo. Aside from agreeing with Reuters that brutality to women ranks as “odd,” Yahoo is partner with Fox News Business, and now finds that The Politico is a trusted news source.
So while Yahoo has shown it doesn’t want to be gobbled up by Microsoft, it doesn’t appear to mind promoting right-wing propagandists one bit.
–WKW
March 27th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I think we should just micro market news to custom fit all of our preconceived political beliefs and ideologies. We have the technology to make it a reality. Then everyone will hear exactly what they want to hear all the time.
What is scary to me is how many people out there in the world have absolutely no concept of what constitutes a credible source.
If you look at worldnedaily, it should be obvious from the Ronald Reagan tee shirt adds and the free pamphlets that disprove evolution, that this is not an objective news source. But many people spread WND crap all over the web via forums and blogs.