You see, it's not even that I disagree with Greenwald's article on Salon.com today. It's that I don't take Politico.com anywhere near as seriously as he does. Politico is a gossip rag. They don't even pretend to be anything but a rag, and it's journalists like Greenwald and Chris Matthews, who often invites Politico reporters, if you can call them that, on Hardball, that give Politico respect.
Greenwald is right; Politico's media reporter Michael Calderone's article, Top 10 political scoops of 2008, is an example of what's wrong with journalism. But Politico is a low hanging fruit. I mean, come on. Greenwald might as well be taking Huffington Post to task for hosting the link and himself for the same.
Politico's articles are written to be linked to by the Drudge Report, Mark Halperin's The Page, and other blogs. If you're going to take someone in the traditional media to task, why not go after Time Magazine for giving Mark Halperin and his asine reporting a place on the Web?
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I take your point, but the problem that Glenn sees, I imagine, is that Politico is in fact treated as a primary source of political news by a lot of people, and by a lot of influential people.
ReplyDeleteThey're the new Drudge, in some ways -- I suspect that they serve as a source of story ideas for others in the media. They are without doubt referred to as a credible source by lots of other political reporters.
So, they bear being watchdogged.
I would say the same reason applies to the HuffPo, though perhaps not going quite as crazy over the celebrities' blogs section.
ReplyDeleteThen that should be Glenn's argument, then. He needs to take Politico down a level and by giving them a larger platform; ie, Politico = Journalism is horrible. why not take on the media for claiming Politico is journalism.
ReplyDeleteI take your point in the abstract, but the idea of trying to make the case like "Politico is not a serious source" seems unwinnable. Sometimes you have to grant a little more credibility than is merited and attack the specifics.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe in the long run, this strategy serves to undermine the overall credibility.