11mo ago

Politico Gets Raked Over the Coals for Kamala Harris Post: ‘One of the Worst Headlines Written in a Long Time’

www.mediaite.com

Hopefully the mods are okay with a little journalism about journalism so that people know where Politico stands in terms of being a trustworthy source.

The headline in question:

‘Next question’: Harris evades questions about her identity

The background to the headline is from Harris' recent CNN interview:

“I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump,” Bash said to Harris. “I was a little bit surprised. People might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face-to-face. That’s gonna change soon. But what I wanna ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you ‘happened’ to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.”
“Same old, tired playbook,” Harris replied. “Next question, please.”

91 comments

Honest question from a European: Do you guys still have journalism somewhere? It all seems to be political propaganda or outrage clickbait with you guys.
- Point of order from an American: Politico is a wholly owned subsidiary of German multinational Axel Springer.
  
  Didn't know that (i'm German), but Springer ist known in Germany to outright lie to push rightwing agenda
  
  Touché (I'm German, btw)
  
  Do they own Spiegel?
- Very little, but there is NPR, which generally attempts to do real journalism.
  https://www.npr.org/
  
  Democracy Now! Also
  
  Which is precisely why Musk has flagged it as possible misinformation on Xitter.
  
  Agree, though their coverage of Bernie's 2016 presidential run towed the DNC party line, which made me less sure about their neutrality. Now I tend to hit up the BBC if I want US news coverage and I don't have time to ingest multiple sources.
- John Oliver
- Local affiliates and independent papers tend to be much better.
  
  Until they get bought up by Sinclair or Gannett.
- There are a lot of 'content creators' that pose as journalists.
  There are journalists that do great work but since their stories can run counter to a narrative, it can be more difficult to find those articles.
  
  Specifically, "Good Work" and "Some More News" spring to mind as producing well researched pieces - they're both highly specialized and only deliver occasional focused news rather than a continuous spread of general goings-on... but given how many outlets are happy to spam low quality continuous bullshit I consider that a good thing.
- This is the culmination of unchecked capitalism having full control of the media. The truth hasn’t mattered for a really long time – only which words are most profitable.
- Related question: what do you guys think of the associated press?
  
  American here: their goal is clearly factual reporting, and I don't see too often where they've missed the mark. Nobody's free of bias, but they're pretty good at balancing theirs out.
- We have it less and less too here in the EU.
  IMO.
- We have capitalism that is regulated less and less with every Repub admin, so no, unfortunately.
- Drop Site news, 404 media, Pro Publica, Vox is occasionally good.
  Short answer is “not much.”
  
  I just had an article removed today from Drop Site news because it had been posted on their Substack. :/
- This is your future if you can't stop the liberals.
  
  Liberals... Those who want liberty
  
  Hey, remember when you said you'd vote if Biden was replaced? Good times. How's that going?
- Most of our real journalism lives online or is parroted from foreign journalists
- I get most of my news from Reuters (which is UK-based I think). I used to read NPR but I think Reuters has more quality content. Beyond that, the Associated Press I guess, and that's all I really trust.
  The Onion too, for when I need to forget how fucked we all are as a species.
Multi race people are use to this shit. We are denied one race or another. If you don't look how people expect you will receive racist shit about both races, really fun.
I have many issues with Harris, but I'm glad she is exposing this shit. I'm tired of closet and undercover racists.
- It's amazing how many of them feel emboldened to come out of the woodwork now. It's because they're a bunch of 30- and 40-somethings who grew up and/or spent their on 4Chan and never left that mindset.
  
  You would be surprised how many whisper at work and get upset when you expose them. I love doing it. I'm the undercover brother.
  
  Adam Connover did a really good interview of Elle Reeve going into this, with a particular focus on JD Vance:
  https://youtu.be/3cpwJ7o0o6c
- I’m not biracial but I am a dual citizen. When I lived in Canada I was called a yankee and when I moved to the USA I was called a Canuck. Can’t win lol.
  
  Yankanuck?
- Mostly we just make up our own race. I’ve pretty much settled on “dark white”.
so that people know where Politico stands in terms of being a trustworthy source
I just assume all media actually want a Trump victory, because they get money writing articles and the money was good his first term. If Trump is good at anything, it's making headlines.
- Saw this on Mastodon:
  
  Trump gives tax cuts to the rich. Rich people own the media. This has always been true, but with the extreme increase in inequality, it’s never been worse. There’s no longer a liberal media.
  
  I agree that Politico is a rag, but this sounds made up.
- News rooms definitely downsized when Biden was president.
Keep in mind race is very important to conservatives. VERY IMPORTANT. to them, once an association is made ... It can not be changed. And you can't be 2 races at once. its very important to them and they have lots of rules about it.
- Hence their ongoing efforts to ban Critical Race Theory.
Bash said: "But what I wanna ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you ‘happened’ to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.”
Where was the question? That's simply a statement about what Trump said.
Politico's headline is outrageous, but what was Bash even trying to do here? Because it reads like she was trying to ask (without asking) if Harris is black, which is just as weird and absurd as Trump's original comment.
Harris's reply is great because it applies both to Trump's racism and the problem with journalists giving these comments anything more than ridicule.
- Where was the question? That’s simply a statement about what Trump said.
  All of Dana Bash's questions were just Donald Trump talking points.
How is plainly calling it out as the bullshit that it is "evasion?" That headline isn't just misleading; it's a straight-up lie.
Acting like there's any legitimate questions about Harris being a black person is inherently racist and doing the bidding of Trump. I didn't think very highly of Politico before this but unless they fire whoever wrote that headline they are dead to me now.
- I love it. Only one party is talking about race and furious about it.
- ...she's half caribbean and half south-asian...
  ...is that black?..that's on you...
  ...does it matter?..that's on you, too...
  ...any issue says more about the person asking the questions than it does about the candidate; what i think is noteworthy is that nobody's talking about her gender, a fact which constitutes a substantial milestone for cultural progress...
Axel Springer bought Politico a while ago. In other words: it's utter shit and absolutely useless for any actual reporting. But great if you want to peddle some reactionary bullshit.
Headline is still up on their front page even:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/30/harris-cnn-interview-race-gender-00176929
"Harris sidesteps the spotlight when it comes to her identity
The vice president makes her case on identity implicit. Black women are OK with that."
- If I ever see a question like that posed to a white politician I will accept it as valid. Otherwise it's just more dumb racist shit.
  
  Elizabeth Warren?
These corporate media companies are all the same and are a blight upon our society.
She should have asked Bash when he happened to turn orange. He used to be white.
Journalism was already in a death spiral but this type of article just highlights it.
They're just taking a secondary source with a shitty headline, cherry picking spicy reactions on Twitter and then writing another shitty headline.
I could theoretically do the same thing, cherrypick Twitter and then post the following "article" to my own shit-tier political news blog:
"Mediaite panned for misleading headline about headlines."
The only "sources" I have to cite are random Tweets that I preselected because they already agreed with my point of view.
We are approaching something that is close to the opposite of journalism.
The headline is, “Harris sidesteps spotlight when it comes to her identity.”
- the tweet Politico sent to promote it was incredibly misleading and stated Harris had dodged a question about herself.
Reminder that politico was bought by the german Axel Springer Publishing.
They (Axel Springer) own very big far right media outlets in germany and WILL try to meddle in the elections, if the price is right.
They have no morals and do journalistic malpractice all the time. It is a textbook evil company and belongs in the dumpster.
ps: The scientific Springer and Axel Springer are not the same.
Is there punishment when you falsify reports like this?
- Yes, collective punishment, i.e. trump gets elected.
For once, this complaint is fully justified. She answered the question and said 'next' and they're implying she didn't answer the question by just saying 'next.'
I feel like sometimes "out of context" means they didn't report on additional relevant nuance in an answer but I'm sympathetic to headline authors who need punchy headlines, you can't have a full 20 minute answer in a headline. But this was a 6 word response and they took the last two and pretended she didn't say the first 4. That is bad.
The article is fine, tbh, it's just talking about how Harris is putting less emphasis on the historic nature of her candidacy versus Clinton in 2016. The headline was hot garbage though, just trying to bait those rage-clicks (which obviously worked).
- Did it? I didn't bother with the article, and only shared a screenshot of a post about the headline.

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