Politico stepped in it on Friday with an oddly framed headline about a response Vice President Kamala Harris gave during an interview the day before.
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.”
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.
I wouldn't say the Daily Show does real journalism. They do make important stories public, but they have a clear slant both in terms of politics and in terms of making it funny.
Study and research, definitely. But I still wouldn't call it journalism. It's satire based on research. When going for a joke over necessary details, they will often go for the joke. And if you read the story elsewhere, you will see that something important has been left out because of it.
I love The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight a long with A Closer Look on Seth Myers' show and I regularly watch all of them, but I still wouldn't call them journalism. It's well-researched extremely topical comedy. And that's fine. That's a good thing. People can get their information from comedy too. It's just that you shouldn't necessarily turn to them for a full picture of a story.
That said, I would say that's much less true of Last Week Tonight because they go in depth into a subject. The Daily Show and A Closer Look spend at most 6 or 7 minutes on a subject and have to fit in a lot of jokes.
And that's why I (& sounds like you, too) watch them: as you said they bring valid topics to the table. If they're skewing the facts severely, they make it pretty obviously part(y) of the jokes. Doonesbury was always more of a news media than national inquirer.
Comedy delivered from a proper court jester beats the telltale gossip rag for actual useful information every day of the week.
That in mind,
Late night, Tonight shows, daily shows all do a better job of delivering news than Fox.
Plus, they tell you it's only part of the story or give multiple takes on the situations.
Fox, not so much. Some experts agree... Valid topics are only those approved by Sun times & RT.
I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I'm just saying it isn't journalism. It's informational, helpful and sometimes even profound- but it isn't journalism. It's just not journalism when you sacrifice information for humor.
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.
A lot of British people can tell you all about the BBC's toeing the government line. But both are a lot less biased than many other Western media sources. NPR's biggest problem is similar to what the NYT and WaPo do, just to a lesser extent- overcompensating and causing an imbalance toward conservatism in an attempt to look unbiased. WaPo and especially the NYT are far worse though.
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.
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.
The rich, the powerful, the Elect. They want the freedom to own and control anything, even the truth. The """Liberty""" they seek is total privatization of everything, and journalism is part of that.
Politico's bullshit is your liberty. You're free to be lied to by anyone you want!
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.