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.”
Honest question from a European: Do you guys still have journalism somewhere? It all seems to be political propaganda or outrsge 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
Trust me he’s known for that outside of Germany as well.
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
One day I’ll remember English isn’t gendered. Thanks for pointing it out!
It isn’t, but it borrows so many loan words from other languages it sometimes pretends to be. Dont feel bad about it.
Touché (I’m German, btw)
Very little, but there is NPR, which generally attempts to do real journalism.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Local affiliates and independent papers tend to be much better.
Until they get bought up by Sinclair or Gannett.
John Oliver
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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…
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.”
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.
Politico belongs to Axel Springer now so it has absolutely 0 credibility left.
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.
Feels like how they treated Obama over the birth certificate
Like she said: same old, tired playbook
She’s definitely used her race as a political chit, and that’s that’s what Dana was asking her about and what she’s avoided answering. I don’t think anyone here could find any campaign materials from when she was running for DA that referenced her being Black, but there are tons that reference her Asian heritage.
It’s completely reasonable to ask someone why they overhauled their entire racial identity in between campaigns.
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.
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.
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.
That seemed like the entirely right answer. It was a bullshit question that didn’t need dignified with a response.
She should have asked Bash when he happened to turn orange. He used to be white.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Wow, I don’t give a shiite about her identity or she even is. Is she gonna bomb people ? Yes, next question !
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
