Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Mike Allen is the chief political correspondent for Politico. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post

All morning, Fox News has reporting that they were first to break the story that Newt Gingrich has decided not to run for President. A while after Fox’s first report, left-leaning politcal reporting website Politico ran a story which at the very end contained one slightly non-sequiter sentence: “CNN was first to report the reversal”. Clearly someone at CNN spoke to the writer, Mike Allen, and asked him to give them this credit. The “scoop” is a very big deal in the news business.

The question is, is it true, or is it not? And if it’s not true, why would Mike Allen report it without being absolutely certain, unless he’s taken sides in the Left vs. Right war that has broken out this week between Fox and CNN, as embodied by CNN’s lying smear campaign against Bill O’Reilly. Mr. Allen comes from both the Washington Post and Time Magazine.

If it’s true, then it’s good reporting on the part of Mr. Allen. If it’s not, then it’s clear that he’s in the tank for CNN, and is even willing to lie for them. And it raises the question of whether or not he’s doing so just due to a personal relationship with the network, or due to a leftist ideological desire to elevate CNN above Fox.