They don't even try to disguise it...
In the June 22 edition of his daily "Politico Playbook," Politico chief political correspondent Mike Allen praised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) June 21 speech on national security at the American Enterprise Institute's World Forum as "very ambitious and serious" and dubbed Romney "Multimedia Mitt," inviting readers to "[c]heck out the 31 Power Point slides former Gov. Romney used last night." Allen, however, offered no explanation as to why Romney's speech was, as he put it, "very ambitious and serious." Indeed, Allen acknowledged that he had not seen Romney's speech and hadn't read it in full -- he noted that the speech was "closed to the press under AEI rules" and that the campaign released only "excerpts" of the speech. Moreover, Allen did not note, as the weblog Think Progress did, that the excerpts of Romney's "serious" national security speech included no substantive remarks on the Iraq war.
Allen went on to highlight New York Times and Associated Press articles on a nonprofit organization set up by Democratic candidate John Edwards, which both articles said has allowed him to maintain a public profile even though he is no longer in public office. Allen wrote that the articles "make John Edwards' altruism look a little less altruistic."
Allen, however, still has not addressed a June 19 Newsday report that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) quit the Iraq Study Group (ISG) after failing to attend a single meeting, and instead delivered public speeches that earned him $300,000.
C'mon guys, seriously, this is embarrassing. At least make a pretense of being journalists.
