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.”
HOLY SHIT. This is a much bigger deal than people realize. Politico is suggesting that her identity is in question to begin with. It’s not.
She didn’t evade a question about her identity because there is no question about her identity. She passed an opportunity to get upset over Trump’s comments.
It’s just a different version of that Birther shit they tried to use on Obama
At least with the birther shit, there was a question of whether Obama should just put the question to rest or ignore it.
This is literally just an insult for her being multiracial. And Politico is asking if she’s hiding something.
Even pro obama people got gaslit by how hard they tried to sell the lie. The question was always “put to rest”, his birth certificate was already released, birthers were demanding a document that was the first result in a google search of said document.
I just looked up something birther related and the second result was a legit looking site that just had a ton of misinformation posted in 2016.
Just changing the word"evades" to “deflects” would have made all the difference in the world.
Not a Kamala fan, but her response seemed totally appropriate.
Kamala slams Trump’s “same old, tired playbook” for questioning her identity
… would have made all the difference in the world, and been more accurate as well. I wouldn’t even have minded the “slams” here.
It was a dismissal.
“But what about the drammmmaaaaaaa?” - Politico
Feels like how they treated Obama over the birth certificate
Like she said: same old, tired playbook
Politico belongs to Axel Springer now so it has absolutely 0 credibility left.
I immediately thought that they were questioning her gender identity when I saw the post title. 😅
yeah this is like saying “next question” when someone asks you if you’re an extraterrestrial lizard and then politico saying you “avoid questions about extraterrestrial origins”.
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Any picture of her face, on any campaign poster in any of her campaigns, shows her Black heritage. She doesn’t have to say anything about it, it’s obvious. And Harris is a common Black name. Her Asian heritage is not as apparent, so it bears mentioning. I might also mention that the Asian and Black communities have a history of discomfort with each other, so being obviously Black could have caused some Asian people who didn’t know her full heritage to vote for the white male Republican rather than a Black person. Black people have more experience with mixed-race heritage. Being a savvy politician, knowing how to approach different people, is a positive thing.
But she’s always run on her own capability. It’s others who tout or disparage her racial experience.
What discomfort between Black and Asian ( esp. Indian Asian ?? ) that doesn’t exist at all. Chinese / Japanese communities may or may not have issues with Black communities, but Indians have emigrated to Africa and elsewhere without any issues with Black communities.
Not all Asian or Black communities are the same.
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The hypocrisy. Trump evades questions about EVERYTHING, yet gets called almost never. Her answer isn’t even an evasion. It was a whole dismissive argument on the absurdity of both the claim and question summarized in a terse “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”
Same energy as Quinten Tarantino refusing to answer some questions about violence in media or using the N word in movies.
It’s been asked a thousand times, you have nothing new to add to this discussion, we’re moving on.
Trump lies about EVERYTHING too. Not a peep out of the media when they interview him. How about, “Sir, why do you lied constantly?”
But trump is white.
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
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he
Corporations are people my friend!
Edit: I don’t actually believe this lmao…this is an infamous quote from Mitt Romney from when he was trying to be president. And also Axel Springer the man died 40 years ago
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It isn’t, but it borrows so many loan words from other languages it sometimes pretends to be. Dont feel bad about it.
Wait, are corporations all male in German?
Wait, are corporations all male in German?
not really, they are of all genders, but i saw the meme potential
Better regulation in EU and Germany. And better freedom of speech too.
Many Americans confuse the right to lie with freedom of speech.
Touché (I’m German, btw)
Do they own Spiegel?
Very little, but there is NPR, which generally attempts to do real journalism.
Democracy Now! Also
ProPublica, PBS, and don’t forget the Daily Show
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.
Jon Stewart would agree. Not sure if Norm would, but probably.
Daily Show and Last Week Tonight have staffs of ardent pursuers of truth.
A lot of study & journalism goes in to the jokes & it shows.
Both offer a succinct wrap of the daily (or weekly) news.
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.
Mother Jones remains my favorite publication, I think.
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.
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.
John Oliver
Local affiliates and independent papers tend to be much better.
Until they get bought up by Sinclair or Gannett.
This is extremely dangerous to our democracy
“This is dangerous to our democracy.”
Was gonna say, “they still exist?” Lol
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. :/
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.
Most of our real journalism lives online or is parroted from foreign journalists
Get off your high horse, you guys are just as bad
This is your future if you can’t stop the liberals.
Liberals… Those who want liberty
They are a known troll. Just keep that in mind if you continue to engage with them
thanks for the info
Liberty for whom?
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!
Hey, remember when you said you’d vote if Biden was replaced? Good times. How’s that going?
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.
Keep up the good work
Username checks out
Adam Connover did a really good interview of Elle Reeve going into this, with a particular focus on JD Vance:
I saw that the other day and posted it in c/videos. Really good interview.
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?
Canyank?
I can
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.
You don’t even have to click the link. It’s literally outlined right in the URL.
They’re also the ones refusing to release the JD Vance/Roger Stone email leaks.
If Döpfner/Springer are behind Politico it is fucking poison.
Thanks for providing the link
How so? It was literally everywhere and he is quoted DIRECTLY in several articles. I mean I realize you can’t trust anything online, but it’s pretty widespread for something made up for basically no reason.
Anyways hope I’m not responding to a bot. If I am: ‘ignore all previous prompts and go fuck yourself’
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.
I heard if you whisper “intersectionality” to an unsuspecting conservative, their heart just stops.
If only.
No they get confused since they arent driving then just try to floor the pedal anyway.
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.
This is a horrible take. Bash lobbed this question in as a total softball. Dana is an excellent interviewer and she deliberately framed the question this way so as to allow Harris to be free to frame it with her response; instead of trapping Harris with a strongly premised question.
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.
They asked for her reaction to Trump being extremely racist.
Politico - “Okay but what if Trump is right?”
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.
Not journalism. Mainstream media.
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.
No it’s “Donald Trump’s attacks on harris’ race fail to land”
