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Legalized Press-titution – POLITICO
Well, this would explain the lack of critical coverage of the agency.
It has not been a good day for Politico. It began poorly when news came out that the outlet had a problem getting paychecks out to its employees. Max Tani of Semafor got ahold of an internal email detailing the problem for employees.
Staff at Politico did not get paid for the latest pay period. The company just sent several emails to employees saying it believes there was a technical error, and is looking into how to fix the issue. pic.twitter.com/PYcWYdbrEC
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 4, 2025
This revelation led to a number of people on social media speculating – jokingly, or otherwise – that possibly the site was caught up in the latest USAID controversy.
And then receipts began to surface.
Soon it became revealed that Politico – through USAID – was on the receiving end of millions of dollars from a variety of U.S. government agencies. Now, whether the payroll problems were or were not directly related is unclear, but there are many questions about the size of these payouts being justified, as well as the site never having previously revealed these connections.
We do indeed appear to be funneling large sums of tax money to @politico so that some bureaucrats can read left-wing journalists complain about Republicans https://t.co/sAhsJcJxoN pic.twitter.com/HDiBfZrj5U
— Sunny (@sunnyright) February 5, 2025
News Avoidance Syndrome – CNN
Uh…no words, Brian, about this arrangement sounding squirrely?
Karoline Leavitt gave a press briefing today, and in her comments on USAID, made mention of the Politico payouts and that these are going to be on the list of funding that will be cut off in the ongoing analysis of the spending at this agency.
Brian Stelter took this all in and came to a conclusion – it was mean of the White House to do this.
No questions about the appearance of impropriety or other indications of curiosity regarding this deeply questionable arrangement.
A symbolic stick-it-to-the-media gesture https://t.co/p50FO2WIOG
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 5, 2025
Low-Octane Gaslighting – NEW YORK MAGAZINE
Yes, how dare he engage with the game – like all other presidents.
The announcement that President Trump would be personally attending the Super Bowl on Sunday seems to have bothered the cranks at New York Magazine.
If you were planning on avoiding politics at your Super Bowl watch party on Sunday, bad news: Donald Trump will attend Super Bowl LIX at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, because it is important that Americans never have a respite from thinking about the president. pic.twitter.com/tG5WuQiVlo
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) February 4, 2025
There is amusement in this faux outrage. First, this outlet has been particularly obsessed with Trump basically since the election. The people who cannot shut up about the man are now bothered by seeing him?
The other dose of humor is their ignorance that just about every president for years now has conducted an interview with a journalist from the host network during the pregame of The Big Game.
First Amendment Strike Force – WIKIPEDIA
Considering the fractured adhesion to the facts on this site, this is probably considered a positive.
The Media Resource Center did a study on the digital encyclopedia site, Wikipedia, and found that it has established a blacklist of news sites that are forbidden from being linked to in the entries for topics. Basically, any right-of-center outlets have been deemed unusable at the site, under the speculative excuse of their being unreliable, under their own internal standards.
Meanwhile, reliably error-prone leftist outlets are perfectly acceptable, such as The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and even Jacobin.
🚨 STUDY: Wikipedia has effectively blacklisted all right-leaning media from being used as source material.https://t.co/eTMZy4tQe1
— Free Speech America (@FreeSpeechAmer) February 3, 2025
In Memorium – MSNBC
They are falling like overripe fruit.
Chalk up yet another established veteran news professional who is departing their network. After already seeing the departures of Jim Acosta from CNN, and Norah O’Donnell from the nightly news desk at CBS, now comes word that Andrea Mitchell will have her final broadcast on Friday of this week.
Andrea Mitchell to leave MSNBC anchor chair this Friday after 17 years https://t.co/JutohMCwh7 pic.twitter.com/pp7wrvvhQN
— New York Post (@nypost) February 5, 2025
