Politics

How we cover Politics

Politics is a long-running theatrical production with poor scripts and good catering. The cast turns over every two and six years. The set has not been redecorated since the 1960s. There are two main parties, both of which insist they are the only thing standing between you and disaster, and both of which have been wrong about something important within your lifetime. SignalPop's politics room covers it as theater that occasionally produces statutes. We lead with the wire copy from Reuters, the Associated Press, and the BBC for the first read of what happened. We layer in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Politico for the committee-level reporting that the wires skip. Press releases dressed up as news are treated as press releases. The Outrage Inflation widget flags coverage running hotter than the underlying event warrants. The Bullshit Index scores items for source quality, corroboration, and theater. Partisan messaging routes low or off the page entirely. Two or three real developments a day; the rest is staging. Every headline links out to the publication that did the work, because no two-minute summary deserves credit for it.