Meta-Blogging: PoliticsXX = Republican

Part of my weekly reading is PoliticsNY, PoliticsNJ, PoliticsPA, and PoliticsNH. These are political news sites devoted to their respective states. There's one for most states, though some of them are .net or .org. Most of them are fairly high traffic sites, as they feature "insider" political stories, and often cover local races that the national media and large blogs ignore.

For the most part, they are written anonymously. And reading them, you would think they hate all politicians everywhere, and will print any story that makes them look bad.

Well, it turns out that most of the sites are ran by professional Republicans and political insiders. And if you pay attention, there's signs of pro-Republican bias. This doesn't bother me, as I purposefully read sites from both sides of the isle. There is no balanced news anymore.

But it does bother me that they hide their allegiance through shell games. Everyone has a right to write anonymously, that's what the internet is for. But to purposely masquerade as a non-partisan, "fair and balanced" news website is just plain dishonest. Neither side should do it. If you want to anonymously write your opinions, get a blog. Don't buy a online newspaper and pretend its non-partisan to give it credibility.

So if you read PoliticsXX, keep in mind whose writing it. Now that blogs have taken off, there's really no reason to read those sites anyway. Just read the blogs of whoever lives where you care about, and take their political party into consideration when you read it.