Politico appears to be operating under the assumption that its readers are either wholly uninformed or shockingly incurious. Whether or not that is an accurate assessment of Politico’s readership, the product yielded by that uncharitable assumption is liable to grate on the rest of us.
The latest example of the outlet’s efforts to guide its readers to a politically preferable conclusion took the form of a piece with the following headline: “Republicans have hated universities for years. Anti-war protests gave them a reason to punish them.” The copy that followed this headline didn’t strive for greater accuracy. “In 2021, JD Vance proclaimed ‘the universities are the enemy.’ This week, the White House declared war against them,” reporter Irie Sentner began. “President Donald Trump and his administration are escalating their attacks on higher education, intensifying a yearslong effort to hobble the campuses they say breed progressive ideology by casting them not as spaces of innovation, but as hotbeds of hate.”
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