Andy Barr: Politico.com’s Professional Anti-Palin Hack

Last night some guy I’d never heard of before wrote a completely dishonest post on Politico which I wrote about here. His name is Andy Barr. I now know he is a professional slime merchant disguised as a journalist.

I was sure the issue would blow over after seeing how inaccurately Barr portrayed Rick Santorum’s comments. I was wrong.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin could not let it slide. TheRightScoop.com has the video of her appearance on Hannity tonight. Needless to say, I’m very disappointed in Palin. She could not help but take a shot at Santorum and now there’s a story where there really didn’t need to be. Conversely, I’m impressed at how Santorum handled it on Greta Van Susteren’s show. He’s either a really good actor or he really didn’t mean anything by his comments yesterday. I’m leaning towards the latter.

Yes, Andy Barr received a lot of help from his target (oops! violent rhetoric) but this was his intent all along. I decided to do a little research on him and what I found was a pattern of dishonest reporting with the clear goal of perpetuating the anti-Palin narrative.

First, let’s look at his bio on Politico:

Andy Barr covers national politics for POLITICO. He came to POLITICO in September 2008 from The Hill, where he launched and reported for the newspaper’s Blog Briefing Room and covered Capitol Hill and the 2008 presidential campaign for the newspaper.

In addition to reporting, Barr regularly offers political analysis and commentary on national television and radio programs, including MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” CBS’s “The Early Show” and NBC’s “Today,” as well as on CNN, BBC, NPR, “The Bill Press Show,” “Imus in the Morning” and Fox Business Channel.

A graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., Barr earned his bachelor’s degree in government. He hails from Phoenix and is a dedicated Cardinals and Suns fan.

So he covers “national politics” for Politico. Run a search on Politico and you see that yes, he does cover national politics but there seems to be a lot of Palin in the mix. Granted, she is in the news a lot and people can’t stop talking about her. So let’s just give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

Now let’s see how he covers Palin and pick some stories at random. Remember last summer when there was a big to-do over Sarah Palin retweeting an article by Thomas Sowell where he makes some comparisons between what Obama is doing and Nazi Germany? Guess which “mainstream” news site pushed this non-story? Guess who wrote the article?

Sarah Palin Praises Column Linking Obama, Hitler

Nice headline. The rest of the article actually talks about the Sowell article more than it does about Palin. Barr also highlights some comments from, you guessed it, Leftists denouncing her tweet. A tweet! And she didn’t “praise” anything. Here’s what she said (there were actually two tweets):

GOP: Don’t let the lamestream media suck you into ‘they’re defending BP over Gulf spill victims’ bs…

This is about the rule of law vs an unconstitutional power grab. Read Thomas Sowell’s article: http://u.nu/6e4ec

That’s praise? Hmm. No. Regardless, Andy Barr got his headline and the narrative is moved forward: Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. Look! She makes Nazi comparisons. (This coming from the Left who has turned making Nazi comparisons into a cottage industry.)

Then there was the whole smear campaign after the shooting in Tucson, Arizona. You’ll recall one of the lines of criticism was that Sarah Palin felt “guilty” over her use of “violent” imagery and language. You may vaguely remember a story about her changing her “Don’t retreat. Reload” line in her speeches. Yes? Guess who wrote that story?

Barr gets caught red-handed on this one. He originally wrote:

Her speech last night to the Safari Club in Reno was closed press, but thanks to the Reno Gazette-Journal’s David Jacobs putting his ear to a closed door, we’re hearing the former Alaska governor’s new line.

Palin dropped the “reload” phrase from her routine, telling the audience of hunters “don’t retreat, stand tall” — a shift from her now infamous and well-known “don’t retreat, reload” line that played on a loop on cable in the after the Tucson shooting.

In the wake of the tragedy, Palin came under attack for having put Giffords’s district in crosshairs on her website.

In Reno, Palin also spoke in favor of gun rights and of her love of hunting, telling the crowd that hunting and fishing is part of American “exceptionalism.”

Then after Palin representatives called him out on it, he changed his article to read:

Palin’s firing back after a Nevada newspaper reported she put a muzzle on her trademark “Don’t retreat, reload!!” phrase in the wake of Rep. Giffords’s shooting.

Her speech last night to the Safari Club in Reno was closed press, but the Reno Gazette-Journal’s David Jacobs put his ear to a closed door.

He reported Palin dropped the “reload” phrase from her routine, telling the audience of hunters “don’t retreat, stand tall” — a shift from her now infamous and well-known “don’t retreat, reload” line that played on a loop on cable in the after the Tucson shooting.

But Palin aide Rebecca Mansour denied that the former governor dropped the line, suggested to her by her father.

“The governor actually did use the phrase ‘Don’t retreat, reload,‘” Mansour told POLITICO in an email. “She also said, ‘Don’t retreat, stand tall.‘”

“Her father, Chuck Heath, was present at the speech yesterday, and the crowd cheered when she pointed to her Dad and repeated this favorite saying of his,” the aide added

As the story on Palin Twibe explains, Barr doesn’t make any attempt to issue what could be considered a correction. He just changed the story. But the damage was done. The meme was “Palin drops ‘reload’” and the Left was off and running.

It seems Barr is fond of inserting those one or two words that change the context of what Palin is saying or doing. Instead of stating that Palin isn’t going to CPAC, Barr inserts the word “snubbed” into the headline. I guess I’m snubbing CPAC too. I’ve never attended and I can’t attend this year, just like Palin.

There are other articles he’s written that can pass for straight reporting. The point is that it’s pretty obvious that Politico has tapped this low level staff writer as their go to “make stuff up about Palin” guy. He’s supposed to be a journalist, not an editorialist.

We’re watching, Andy.