Politico
Politico started when left-of-center John F. Harris, and the slightly less left-of-center Jim VandeHei (who left to found Axios in disgust, and penned a FU I'm outta here letter), got funding for a DC tabloid journalism (rumor mongering) on the DC set. Sort of what HuffingtonPost was to Hollywood, but only for DC, if HuffPo had even lower ethical and journalistic standards. The point isn't that I dislike Politico -- its looser quality controls allows for some people to get a voice that they wouldn't have elsewhere. So to me, it's like reddit or twitchy -- sure most articles are full of shit, but they allow both sides turds, and you can find some treasures in the sewage, if you are willing to wade long enough.
Fake News
FakeNews (Junk News or yellow journalism) is when legitimate stories or facts are suppressed, journalistic standards aren't adhered to, half truths are told, or a narrative spun to where the story becomes misleading or false. Think: manufactured crises, hoaxes, clickbait (sensational teasers/headlines with buried facts), bias or selective fact-checking, anonymous or paid sources, minor stories obscuring more significant news, delaying or ignoring newsworthy events, are all forms of FakeNews. Most retractions or corrections are evidence of shoddy standards and/or editorial bias creating FakeNews. Here's a few of Politico's greatest hits:
- COVID is a hoax - Politico ran a piece titled, "Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax’". (CNN, MSNBC, leftist polemics and politicians repeated it). This is a bald-faced lie, at a rally Trump called the effort to blame him for COVID a hoax. Even FakeNews Fact Checkers had to admit it.
- 2019.03.20 FOIA Requests - Biased News is Fake News, as is having different standards based on party. So a real Journalist (Brent Scher at Free Beacon), just did a simple thing: compared FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to the EPA to see how many times media outlets fact checked or investigated Obama versus Trump. NYT did 4x as many request in Trump's first year, as Obama's entire last term. WaPo: went from 1 request for Obama's last term to 43 in Trump's first 2 years. Politico: 15 to 198. CNN 25 to 47. Buzzfeed: 18 to 38. ABC: 4 to 32. This is evidence of a double-standard that the observant have known about for decades.
- 2019.02.27 Pence lacks Foreign Policy - Politico (Jack Shafer) wrote a Pence hit piece claiming that "the human mannequin" was retooled as foreign representative, "despite his scant foreign policy experience". Then it was pointed out that he was on the "House Foreign Affairs Committee for a decade while a member of Congress". Or about 10x the combined experience of Hillary and Barack combined before he won the Presidency and she didn't. That fact obviates the entire story. Politico corrected the story when called out, without mentioning the duration. Then again, to add the "decade" part later.... after the harm was done: knowing that their readers lips will move while reading only the headline. A journalists would have reached out and asked before running the story. Or not written that tripe in the first place.
- 2019.02.05 SOTU 2019 - The State of the Union speech was a little late (thanks to Nancy's shutdown), but it got delivered. Trump took the high road, Nancy/Dems took the lower one. Trump got a 76% approval, and higher ratings that 2018 or Obama, on a longer and deeper speech . But FakeNews NBC called it a "Theater of the Absurd". And the Fake FactCheckers at NYT, Politico, NPR and WaPo all proved their bias in their counter-factuals.
- 2017.02.15 Tucker Carlson roasts Erik Wemple - Video where Tucker calls out WaPo (Erik Wemple, their media critic) for criticizing Trump administration over "Russia" ties, while they are running "native advertising", which is code for Russia writes and distributes their own propaganda pamphlets distributed inside WaPo. This being done while WaPo media editor is slamming competitors (Mike Allen / Politico) for doing the same thing. Then he goes on to demonstrate many mistakes the paper made and their own media reporter didn't cover. Hypocrisy is FakeNews.
- 2013.05.16 Open Border Hillary - Wikileaks leaked the text of private, paid speech to a Brazilian bank where Clinton said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders..." 3 years later, Politifact, FactCheck and CNN were claiming that Hillary never said or meant it, and spent their energies defending her reputation instead of communicating what was said and leaving it up to their readers.
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