Politico: Liberal Media Bias 'Often Rings True, Even to People Who Don’t Listen to Rush Limbaugh'

NewsBusters reported Thursday disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather said the idea of liberal media bias "is a sham."

Hours later, Politico surprisingly took a different position saying the presence of such bias "often rings true, even to people who don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh":

On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding. The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.

Only days earlier, news surfaced that author David Maraniss had unearthed new details about Barack Obama’s prolific, college-age dope-smoking for his new book, “Barack Obama: The Story” — and the Times made it a brief on A15.

No wonder Republicans are livid with the early coverage of the 2012 general election campaign. To them, reporters are scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience – and once again downplaying ones that could hurt the president. [...]

Republicans cry “bias” so often it feels like a campaign theme. It is, largely because it fires up conservatives and diminishes the punch of legitimate investigative or narrative journalism. But it also is because it often rings true, even to people who don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh – or Haley Barbour.

And the imbalance can do slow, low-grade but unmistakable damage to Romney.

Politico didn't only mention the Times. It also targetted the Washington Post:

And the horse-riding story came a few weeks after a second story that made Republicans see red – another front-pager, this time in the Washington Post, that hit Mitt Romney for bullying a kid who might have been gay, in high school nearly a half-century ago. The clear implication to readers: Romney was a mean, insensitive jerk...[T]he 5,500-word account was invested with far more significance than it merited, and is more voyeuristic than relevant to assessing Romney’s readiness for office.

It's certainly nice to see Politico busting some of its competition's biases, but it rings a tad hollow coming from an organization that published a truly pathetic, massive hit-piece on former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain last October which NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president called a "high-tech lynching."

More recently, Politico has hardly been a bastion of impartiality when it comes to the presidential race. Here are just a few examples of its obvious biases:

• Politico Lets Obama Off Unemployment Hook: 'Bleak Numbers Beyond His Control'
• Politico's Gavin Whitewashes Obama Primary Embarrassments
• Politico's Jonathan Martin Mocks Conservative Florida Voters as the 'Cracker Counties'
• Politico's Thomas & WaPo's King Claim Santorum 'Pandering' to Racist Whites in GOP
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What do they say about people in glass houses?