Politico reporters can read minds!

Politico has made quite a splash since it was founded in 2007, in part because of a relentless focus on creating buzzworthy stories. Its pursuit of that goal has often resulted in coverage that pushes various pathologies of the political media to a new level. At this point, no publication can match Politico's hyper-focused coverage of politics and process, minute-by-minute accounts of the news cycle, and personality-driven coverage of politicians.

One especially disturbing example of the way Politico has supercharged news media pathologies is its formalization of the all-too-common practice of faux journalistic mind-reading. As I've shown over and over again, reporters and pundits frequently make claims about politicians' inner thoughts that can't possibly be verified in order to create dramatic narratives. But these claims are usually made without quotation marks. Politico has now started to write whole articles centered on fake inner monologues attributed to politicians.

Back in March, I pointed out that Politico editor John F. Harris and reporter Jonathan Martin had written an article titled "What Obama said and what he meant" that purported to provide a "translation" of the President's statements at a press conference.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown wrote a similar piece titled "Reading Barack Obama's mind on health care" (via TPM). In it, she writes that she did "a little imaginary spelunking in the caves of the presidential mind and came up with this take on what Obama might really be thinking when it comes to health care." In other words, she made it up.

If this is the new model for political journalism, we're in trouble.

Comments

[David]

The alleged mind-reading seems to me to be a polite way for the reporter to write, "So-and-so is lying and stone-walling. So we can't discern what he will do from his words. Here's my best guess of what he will actually do."

Unfortunately politicians do lie and stonewall. ("How can you tell if a poltician is lying?" "His lips are moving.") Yet, it's important for the public to understand in advance important issues such as what's going to happen to our health-care system. So, the reporter is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If he just reports the politician's words he may be misleading his readers. But, if he goes beyond the politician's words, he's making it up.

IMHO the real problem is that politicians are restructuring important aspects of our lives without letting us know just they're doing to us.

[rone]

David, despite your black-and-white framing, the fact is that journalists can analyze what politicians say and even make educated guesses without resorting to cheap "mind-reading" devices. They don't because they're lazy, and because narratives are provocative and thus sell better.

[Rob]

McCaughey writes that people who change insurance plans will have to join a qualified plan. The proposed government plan will be among the qualified plans, but it won't be the only such plan. Private insurance plans offered through the proposed exchanges will all be qualified plans. So I believe your concern about people not being able to join a private plan is misplaced.

However, people who are provided insurance through their employers are of course limited to whichever plan the employer selects. If the government plan underprices the private plans (which it may well be able to do by virtue of economies of scale, bargaining power, and reduced costs of administration, particularly with respect to collection of premiums), it's reasonable to assume that many employers will select the government plan. President Obama's assurance that anyone who's happy with his current plan can keep it ignores this important fact.

[Tom]

Safire did much the same thing to Clinton with his "Reading Bill's Mind" essay.