Something weird is happening at Politico and Axios.
Something weird is happening at Politico and Axios.
I n a market positively saturated with fawning and propagandistic coverage of the Harris campaign, two Virginia-based newsrooms stand out for their commitment to that mission.
Politico and Axios, which share founding members, also share first prize in producing election coverage that reads more like Democratic National Committee press releases. In this area, they have no serious competition. The combined coverage is consistently sycophantic, lowbrow, and gossipy — far worse than any other political coverage produced by newsrooms in the nation’s capital, including the Washington Post.
For example, a brief review of Politico’s social-media feeds during the Democratic National Convention revealed a profoundly unserious and ideologically tilted newsroom, one whose copy contained all the unbridled glee and excitement of a teen fan magazine.
“In Tim Walz, Black women see the ‘right white man’ for VP,” read one headline.
Another read, “Mindy Kaling is proud to be Kamala Harris’s cooking partner.”
And yet another: “Hakeem Jeffries managed to merge a Trump diss and a Taylor Swift lyric on the DNC stage.”
These headlines were picked at random, by the way. These were not curated for effect. There was simply a 99.9 percent certainty last week that if you scrolled at random through Politico’s newsfeed, you’d land on an excessively positive and glowing review of Democratic speakers, proposals, promises, and speeches. There was nary an unflattering or uncomfortable headline, even for the many skirmishes outside the convention center between police and pro-Hamas agitators.
“Watch out, Trump: Walz shows he’s not just Minnesota nice,” warned one Politico headline.
And another: “Democrats brought the Project 2025 book — and zingers — back.”
“Rep. Grace Meng issues a warning on Trump: ‘He will not stop at banning abortion,’” declared yet another.
For additional reference, here’s a handful of Politico headlines drawn from its coverage of the Republican National Convention in July:
“A parade of Trump’s former GOP rivals bend the knee,” read one headline.
Another said, “The RNC’s closing argument: Trump, Trump Trump.” That one reads very much like a separate headline declaring, “RNC has one message: MAGA, MAGA, MAGA.”
“At one time,” read a separate news blurb, “J.D. Vance’s lack of governing experience would have been disqualifying for a VP nomination. In 2024, Republicans saw it as a badge of honor. How J.D. Vance’s shocking inexperience turned into an asset.”
Vance went from high school to the U.S. Marine Corps, then to college, law school, and the private sector — and then, after writing a best-selling memoir, to the United States Senate, where, like Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he was nominated as vice president before serving a single term in Congress’s upper chamber.
“GOP speakers are going after Kamala Harris,” read one headline from Politico’s coverage of the Republican National Committee.
Another read, “Nikki Haley tried to bring unity to the RNC. Some people booed.”
And yet another: “Marco Rubio takes the stage to sing Trump’s and Vance’s praises.”
Yet this is the type of headline we got last week as Democrats convened in Chicago: “Oprah brings United Center to its feet.”
As Charlie Cooke asked last week, “How would it be different if it were being written by the DNC?”
In reply, one clever friend pointed out that Democratic National Committee materials at least include financial disclaimers.
Meanwhile, reporter Emily Peck at Axios defended Kamala Harris’s price-control proposal last week.
“Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work,” read the news blurb.
You see, it’s not “price controls” when central planners seek to impose artificial price limits on the cost of goods and services. It’s just a “price gouge ban.” We will ignore the fact that prices are high not because of “corporate greed” but because of inflation, for which the central planners are responsible. More seriously, this clumsy attempt at “correcting” our broader understanding of “price controls” comes amid Axios’s separate effort to rewrite the history of Kamala Harris’s appointment as “border czar.” This particularly shameless act of historical revisionism has even seen Axios affixing editors’ notes to three-year-old news reports, claiming it was wrong to call her the thing that she was.
It’s not clear what’s happening at Politico and Axios, but the all-out deference and servility they’ve shown these past few months to Democratic interests, and the general banality of their coverage, plays to a larger theory of mine: News organizations that benefit hugely from a gossipy style of “insider” coverage (see: the loathsome Politico Playbook) are only ever a gentle breeze away from transforming fully into tabloid publications. It takes only the tiniest nudge.