Did Politico Publish Dan Gerstein's Attack On Bloggers Without Identifying Him As Current -- And Even Paid -- Lieberman Adviser?
February 27, 2007 -- 12:53 PM EST // // Post a Comment
Yep, it appears that The Politico may indeed have done just that.
On Feb. 16, The Politico turned over its front page to a long hit piece on liberal bloggers by Liebermanite Dan Gerstein. In the piece -- titled "Liberal Bloggers Demonstrate Their Political Immaturity, Democrat Says" -- Gerstein repeatedly unloaded on bloggers, calling them everything from "spoiled children" to practitioners of "high-tech tantrum tactics." He even suggested that the Democratic Party should punish them by denying them access.
Needless to say, the bloggers or sites targeted by Gerstein -- MyDD, Kos, etc. -- were leading foes of Senator Joe Lieberman's reelection campaign last year.
Here's how The Politico identified Gerstein at the end of the piece:
As you can see, The Politico identified Gerstein here as a former communications director to Lieberman.
Now, let's take a look at another Politico piece on Lieberman: One that is up and running on its Web site right now. In the current article, here's how Gerstein is identified:
Got that? This current piece identifies Gerstein by saying that he "continues to serve as a paid adviser" to Lieberman. That would appear to be saying that Gerstein is currently collecting money to advise Lieberman.
If this is correct, here's what this means about the Feb. 16 piece: The Politico let Gerstein publish a long attack on some of Lieberman's most visible foes -- without mentioning that Gerstein is currently advising Lieberman and even appears to be getting paid by Lieberman or by his office or political committee.
That would be a journalistic no-no.
So what is Gerstein's status with Lieberman? I emailed both him and Lieberman's Senate press office this morning, asking for clarification of his role. No answer from either yet. I did a quick Nexis search, and while Gerstein is sometimes identified as a former adviser, a piece in The Hotline on January 14 -- over two months after election day -- identified Gerstein as "consultant/Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein."
So we have very good reason to suspect that Gerstein may well be a paid adviser to Lieberman. Incidentally, even if Gerstein is merely a current unpaid adviser to Lieberman, The Politico should have identified him as such when it published his attack on some of Lieberman's key political rivals. Hey, who knows, maybe there's an innocent explanation -- perhaps Gerstein wasn't a paid or unpaid adviser to Lieberman less than two weeks ago, but he is now. You never know. But for now, this looks like a bad one.
Update: Crooks and Liars takes a whack at this.
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