Politico Starts Partnership with Bias-denying Reuters Wire

It's official. Politico.com, a favorite of political news junkies on the Web, is partnering up with a British news wire that in November professed that media bias was "largely unseen" in the presidential race.:

Politico announced a new partnership with Reuters on Monday that will provide political, government and business news from both organizations to newspapers across the United States.

In September, Politico launched the Politico Network, a partnership whereby member publications could run Politico content in print or online, while sharing in the profits from online advertisements.

Now, members of the Politico Network—which includes 60 newspapers and 40 broadcast outlets—will be able to run a broad selection of Reuters’ wire copy for free, while similarly sharing in the revenue from online advertising that’s sold by Politico.

And Reuters will distribute Politico stories worldwide through the news organization’s subscription-based wire service.

Existing Reuters subscribers can pay an additional fee to run Politico’s coverage, which includes reporting and analysis on politics, lobbying, Congress and the White House. For future subscribers, the charge will be included in their fee.

“It is no secret newspapers and broadcasting companies are hungry for new and interesting content,” said Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei. “Our partnership with Reuters allows us to offer newspapers and television stations terrific coverage of politics and government, as well as international news, business and sports.”

An excerpt from NewsBusters Editor-at-Large Brent Baker November 9 post on Reuters denying the undeniable:

File under: Don't believe your lying eyes and ears. Barely two weeks after a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey determined that “by a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4,” as even 62 percent of Democrats recognized how journalists hoped Obama would be victorious, Reuters set out to prove any and all favorable Obama coverage had nothing to do with liberal bias. In a November 6 dispatch, “Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race,” Steve Gorman of the Los Angeles bureau focused his story on undermining the “perception that mainstream news organizations routinely gave Obama preferential treatment en route to his election as the first black U.S. president.” Gorman contended:

But media scholars, including a former top aide to McCain, disagree. They said campaign coverage often did lean in Obama's favor, though not -- as many conservatives have suggested -- because of a hidden liberal agenda on the part of the media. Instead, academic experts said, Obama benefited largely from the dynamics of the campaign itself and the media's tendency to focus on the “horse race,” emphasizing ups and downs in the polls and political tactics. As Obama's poll numbers rose in response to events, so did favorable press coverage for him, not the other way round.

Aside from denying the media strongly favored Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. McCain, NewsBusters has noted the news wire's left-wing bent on everything from refusing to label terrorists as terrorists to wondering whether Raul Castro can measure up to brother Fidel's "heroic status."