Earlier this week, we noticed that left-wing eco-billionaire Tom Steyer was sponsoring the THE POLITICO Playbook, the preeminent Beltway newsletter authored by Mike Allen.
Today, we’re pleased to see that THE POLITICO scribe Ken Vogel’s excellent reporting on the Democracy Alliance, a secretive confab of left-wing millionaires and billionaires, is (currently) the feature story on THE POLITICO website:
Vogel details the stunning refusal of Democracy Alliance members, who have gathered this week at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago to coordinate their "dark money" strategy for the 2014 midterms, to acknowledge that their actions are anything less that 100 percent morally pure.
"You can focus on the irony, but it’s not hypocrisy because we’re not trying to get something for our donations," Stride Right shoe baron Arnold Hiatt told THE POLITICO.
It’s a fascinating story, and features a number of Beltway bigwigs such as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. It was written by a THE POLITCO reporter. It should be prime Playbook material.
Except the story is nowhere to be found in today’s newsletter, which is still being sponsored by Steyer’s Super PAC, NextGen Climate Action:
Today’s Playbook features an item on the hot new trend of top executives, including President Obama, taking "power walks" to unwind and get some alone time, but nothing on the secretive gathering of some of the most influential players in American politics.
Perhaps the "irony" of including the story in a newsletter sponsored by a liberal billionaire—who insists that he’s nothing like those evil right-wing donors, according to THE POLITICO—was too much. Allen has faced pretty intense criticism in the past, mostly from the left, for dabbling in what appears to be a form of "native advertising"—blurring the lines between journalism and sponsored content.
Failing to mention such a relevant and thoroughly reported story from a fellow THE POLITICO reporter seems like a curious decision, at the very least.