Is PolitickerMD Starting to Show Its Blue Stripes?

I like PolitickerMD.  I try to read it everyday.  I may not agree with everything I read there, but those folks provide coverage you often can’t get anywhere else (online or off).  Whether I agree with their op-ed pieces or not, they are usually well written and fairly well thought out.  However, today the good folks at Observer Media Group crossed a line – a pretty big one.

In an op-ed titled “Andy Recycles, Who Knew?“, author David Paulson attacks Maryland Senator Andy Harris across the board.  Sometimes he’s factually correct other times he isn’t.

It’s an op-ed, so normally I wouldn’t care.  There’s just one problem.  David Paulson is the Communications Director for the Maryland Democratic Party and PolitickerMD doesn’t bother to disclose the fact anywhere in the body of the article.

Some of you may simply say, “So What?”.  It’s actually a pretty big deal.  Op-ed writers have a POV, no question.  However, if you read a column written by a guy who works for a candidate, office holder, or political party, aren’t you justifiably a tad more skeptical than you would be reading a column by George Will, Thomas Sowell, or Maureen Dowd?

The good folks at PolitickerMD can respond that Paulson’s bio is linked to.  It is.  I link to it above.  However, it’s not quite the same thing.  Very few people click to an author’s profile.  Not putting a note at the bottom of the post stating that Paulson works for the MDDEM’s is a way of making people think that this guy is somehow “objective”.

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Now I know that some will claim hypocrisy on my part because of the recent brooha about an Andy Harris ad.  They would be wrong.  The Harris campaign made a good faith effort to verify that the quote was valid.  The Daily Times never printed ANY correction until after the ad ran.  To date the Kratovil campaign has only made available an edited version of the audio from the event in question.  There’s a big difference.

PolitickerMD, as a rule, does a great job.  While I don’t always like what the man writes, Danny Reiter has done an excellent job covering the First District race along with other aspects of Maryland politics.

To maintain their reputation as an excellent source of balanced Maryland political coverage, they just need to be a little more careful.  You know the old say, “For want of a nail …”.  In this case it’s, “For want of one sentence at the bottom of an op-ed …”.

cross posted at Delmarva Dealings