Politico goes for ‘fair and balanced’

Last week, Politico rocked the insidery world of political journalism with an article, written by executive editor Jim VandeHei and chief White House reporter Mike Allen, that criticized The New York Times and The Washington Post for media bias.

VandeHei and Allen sacrificed accuracy for angle, giving Republican operatives an uncritical platform to accuse the Times and Post -- who, as GQ’s Devin Gordon points out, just happen to be Politico’s chief competitors -- of covering Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney more harshly than they cover President Barack Obama. The piece fixates on two recent stories about Romney and their supposed “implications.” The Times’s recent front-page story about Ann Romney’s involvement in the obscure sport of dressage, for example, is hardly a hit piece, but to VandeHei and Allen, it has a “clear implication” that “the Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.” Politico is also critical of the Post’s recent scoop about Mitt Romney’s high-school years, a story that includes the previously-unreported fact that he once held down a classmate and cut off his long hair. The “clear implication” this time? “Romney was a mean, insensitive jerk.” And the “clear implication” of the Politico piece? That such critical coverage of Obama never gets prominent play in the Times or the Post.