Who funds and runs the Politico?

By GottaLaff

My Twitter pal Shoq just tweeted this:

Politico doing Redstate best to trash Obama and health care refrom with each new headline. Not a shock, given who owns it.

I paraphrased his tweet a tiny bit, for the record. But can Shoq back that up? My money's on Yes.

Let's see what fun little tidbits he linked me to. First this:

Frederick J. Ryan, Jr. is president and CEO of The Politico and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation. [1] Beginning in 1985, Ryan served under President Ronald Reagan in "the White House Office of Private Sector Initiatives as well as serving as Director of Presidential Appointments and Scheduling". [2]

Hmm, interesting. But wait, there's more!

The Politico's "publisher, Robert L. Allbritton, 37, scion of the banking and media family that once owned the defunct Washington Star, said in an interview that he would finance The Politico for 'the foreseeable future' and has committed to paying for expensive campaign travel. He has hired a staff of about 50 people, almost half of them journalists," Kara Rowland reported January 22, 2007, in The Washington Times. [...]

Allbritton "is best known for following his father, Joe L. Allbritton, as chief executive of the Riggs Bank, which was sold in 2004 after a Senate investigation found that Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, had kept millions of dollars in secret accounts at Riggs. Robert Allbritton has been chairman and chief executive of Allbritton Communications, which owns television stations in Washington and a half dozen other markets, since 2001," Rowland wrote.

"Politico will generate its revenue through an advertising-supported business model, with many of the ads coming from trade associations, lobbyists, government contractors and other companies looking to attract the attention of Congress, said Albritton President Frederick Ryan Jr. in September [2006] when the venture was initially announced," Katie Wilmeth of The Examiner reported on January 23, 2007.

Oh my! Wait. What's this coming through my imaginary earpiece? Why, it's none other than a report from one of the best-- Glenn Greenwald!

And his close connection to the Reagan family and the Reagan presidency continues through today.

Are we supposed to treat this fact as irrelevant or something when assessing what The Politico is and what type of political coverage it churns out? [...]

The Politico's biggest boosters are Matt Drudge and George W. Bush, and it is run by a Reagan loyalist. At the very least, those facts are worth considering. [...]

When Joe Allbritton was CEO of Riggs Bank, Riggs, in 1997, purchased the company owned by President George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, and Jonathan Bush then became a top Riggs official serving alongside Joe Allbritton (h/t sysprog). That was discovered when, in 2004, Riggs agreed to "pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering," apparently allowing Saudi money, among others, to be laundered through its bank while both Allbritton and Jonathan Bush were its top executives. [...]

But I'm sure the fact that The Politico is (a) funded by a family with multiple, intense right-wing allegiances, (b) run by a career-long Reaganite, and (c) dependent upon Matt Drudge for most of their traffic, has no effect whatsoever on their reporting.

Greenwald has much, much more. Go here to read the rest.

And then think about all of that the next time you read Politico. I will, the next time I link to anything over there... should that occur.