Politico And The Netroots

On reflection I think what was most interesting about this little flap surrounding a bogus global warming story in Politico is the enormous latent hostility demonstrated by left-liberal bloggers towards the online political journal. Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix has dug into some of the background of why the netroots are suspicious of Politico -- and it's mainly a few cherry-picked examples of bad stories baked into a conspiracy theory involving Politico's financial backers (ties to Augusto Pinochet - that'll send the lefty bloggers to their keyboards!). But the Lovley story is the type of clownish reporting that undermines what little remains of traditional "journalistic objectivity." Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt may beg to differ, but I've never been convinced that a sustained assault on the press is good long-term political strategy... so frankly I'd prefer if Politico simply didn't give the netroots such perfect opportunities for letting the dogs out.