News “Aggregation” Is Getting Pretty Careless These Days

Membership Ticker

Support Mother Jones with a year-end donation

Here are the facts: 1) We urgently need to raise $350,000 in online donations this month; 2) Readers told us fundraising is annoying; 3) Both journalism and US democracy are in trouble. So, to make this as un-annoying as possible, we’re hoping less is more right now—and we focus on three simple questions: Why us, why now, and why does your support for our journalism matter? We need a lot of help this month and can’t afford to come up short again. Please make a year-end gift if you can right now.

We need to raise $350,000 in online donations this month to keep Mother Jones charging hard. But readers told us fundraising is annoying, and we don’t want to add to the overwhelming noise. So we’re hoping less is more right now, and that we can “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” in making the case for the year-end gifts we need. Please help if you can right now.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Is news “aggregation” getting out of hand? On Twitter this morning, I happened to see a complaint that TPM had badly mischaracterized a Bernie Sanders speech in Boston this weekend, possibly in an aggregation form of the old telephone game. I was curious, so I went to the original source. It definitely wasn’t telephone. In fact, it was practically a word-for-word rewrite of the original. It was all properly attributed, but still. It’s one thing to quote pieces here and there of your source material, it’s another to lightly rewrite the sentences and publish it under a different name. That ain’t right.

WBUR

TPM

Bernie Sanders, In Boston: Democratic Party Needs To Return Its Focus To Working Class

The Vermont senator told a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly young people at the Berklee Performance Center that this month’s election shows the party has to return its focus to the working class.

“The working class of this country is being decimated — that’s why Donald Trump won,” Sanders said. “And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down.”

Sanders also said supporters needed to help move the party away from what he calls “identity politics.”

“It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’ That is not good enough,” Sanders said. “What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries.”

Sanders Urges Supporters: Ditch Identity Politics And Embrace The Working Class

In a speech Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) urged attendees to move away from “identity politics” and towards policies aimed at helping the working class. Sanders spoke to a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly young people at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, according to a report from WBUR.

“The working class of this country is being decimated — that’s why Donald Trump won,” Sanders said, according to the same report. “And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down.”

Sanders also urged the crowd to move the party away from what he called “identity politics.”

“It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’ That is not good enough,” he said, according to the same report. “What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries.”