The Politico raised two eyebrows when it got a shout-out from Bush at a recent press conference and was then discovered to have a strange love affair with Drudge, chronicled by Media Matters here. The new online magazine boldly states that “Our answer to this [ideological war] will be journalism that insists on the primacy of facts over ideology.”
A third eybrow was raised last night when along with MSNBC and the Reagan Library they hosted the Zombie Reagan Party first GOP debate.
Today Greenwald unloads a bonanza of information regarding the organizations ties to Texas Republicans and amazingly, Pinochet. Let's start calling these wolf tickets right now.
Update:Edited for clarity.
The biggest news + summary:
The Politico's primary (perhaps sole) funding source is the Allbritton Company, of which Frederick Ryan is an employee. The Allbritton family's leader, Joe, was CEO of Riggs Bank when Riggs pleaded guilty to a series of illegal financial transactions with right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his brutal military that took place throughout the 1990s and into 2001.
I suppose some people would say that none of these facts -- such as the fact that The Politico is run by a former and current Reagan official and financed by a family with close ties to one of the world's most notorious right-wing dictators -- is relevant to The Politico's claim of nonpartisan and objective news reporting. It may be the case that none of these facts, standing alone, is fatal to The Politico's credibility in that regard.
But taken together, they certainly seem worth noting, to put it mildly -- and that is particularly so in light of The Politico's very inauspicious start as a constructive and unbiased source of journalism.