Singing the GOP Noise Machine's praise, Politico uncorks this tribute:

Conservatives score string of scoops

Interesting, because the conservative media in recent years has shown an almost allergic reaction to journalism and actual reporting, so I'm curious what its recent claims to fame are.

Politico rolls out the greatest hits:

From birthers to tea parties to town halls and ACORN, the scandal-plagued anti-poverty group — not to mention President Obama's speech last week to school children and the background of former White House aide Van Jones — issues initially dismissed or missed entirely by the national media have burst, if only fleetingly, onto the national agenda after relentless coverage on Fox News, talk radio and in the blogosphere.

Van Jones and ACORN? Fine, those are news stories. But according to Politico, the conservative media have scored “scoops” by relentlessly pressing the phony conspiracy theories that the President of United States is not eligible to serve, and that he was trying to indoctrinate school children with a “socialist” agenda by urging them to excel in the classroom. Also, by they hit a home run by helping turning public town hall forums into hate-fests complete with mini-mob members who showed up with loaded pistols and scores more who paraded around Swastika posters.

That, according to Politico, represents key instances in which the conservative media have been setting the national agenda. The fake birther joke, the fake school address joke and the unhinged mini-mobs stand among its key “scoops” this summer.

Good to know.

It's funny. If liberals had pulled off schemes like that during the Bush years, the Beltway press would have labeled them cranks. But when conservatives do it, Politico chalks the stunts up as “scoops.”