I got my start in news at @politico. I would quit on the spot today. Handing their newsletter to a proudly bad-faith Republican to spread this pure shit is the grossest thing I’ve seen happen there

This isn’t even part of the “is this journalism” debate. This is just sickening

Don’t worry it’s not just inventing a lie that Bernie Sanders told his supporters to shoot people (???) and claiming Trump’s voter fraud lie is the same as Stacey Abrams’ loss (????) it’s also grotesque apologia for Republicans who are — get this — patriotic victims. Hooooly fuck

When we say the news industry is broken beyond repair we mean that decisions like this are made by people once thought of as titanic geniuses but have somehow been poisoned by a desire to so blindly trust a party of strategic liars that they give them full editorial control

There’s no doubt they defend this by saying they’re letting Democrats write Playbook some days and Republicans on other days to get Both Sides. This is a fundamental misunderstanding—or willing buy-in of the lie—of the way the parties approach the truth (big thing in journalism)

One party is openly anti-truth. They’ve been open about it for four years and it’s defined them. Their lies caked the conversation like napalm to the point where those lies were covered as strategy. The other party opposes those lies, but that’s treated as a partisan position

Journalists are supposed to be pro-truth and anti-lie. Since Trump won, that’s been the Democrats’ position, which makes it awkward for journalists because they’re not supposed to agree with one side over another. This is how Republicans weaponized their false sense of neutrality

Ben Shapiro lying about Republicans’ role in the terrorist attack as the author of Playbook is an extreme result of that false belief. Platforming Republicans is already a huge issue but this is something else entirely. And if I worked there now I would have quit immediately