Politico’s Pre-Written Thesis about the Federalist Society Collides with Its Own Reporting

One of the saddest sights in journalism is when a writer goes to report on an event with a predetermined story line, puts in the time, can’t find evidence to support the narrative, and then writes the story anyway. There are some obvious tells in this sort of story, such as elevating marginal, unnamed figures at the event, lapsing into very rough paraphrases, speculating aloud about what the targets of the writer’s reportage must have been thinking, and padding out the column with lots of verbiage that doesn’t advance proof of the writer’s point.

All of these symptoms can be found in Ian Ward’s long, splashy Politico column on Friday about the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium on “Law and Democracy.”