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.”
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.
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".
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...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.
The Harris campaign has consistently handled Trump with a deftness and results-oriented system that we haven’t seen from anyone else. It’s impressive in both its success and its consistency.
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).
Yeah, instead we should put troops on the ground and invade the West Bank with our own soldiers and start bombing kindergartens directly! Hooyah, second Trump Presidency here we go! /s