Politico mistakenly identified Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s pick to be his vice president in a “technical error,” sparking a wave of speculation that it accidentally revealed his pick before the outlet said the information in the post was not accurate.
Late Tuesday afternoon, social media users, including members of President Trump’s campaign, noticed that a version of the outlet’s page that discussed pros and cons of rumored potential Biden running mates identified the California senator as Biden’s pick, with two paragraphs that included a quote attributed to Biden.
Politico?
“Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris to become his running mate for the 2020 election on Aug. 1, two weeks before the Democratic National Convention, after keeping his choice close to the chest for months.”https://t.co/5NCJoaLSNM pic.twitter.com/HD3Fq9aM1S
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 28, 2020
The text read: “Biden called Harris ‘a worthy opponent and a worthy running mate,’ alluding to the pair’s rivalry during the earlier stages of the Democratic primary. She will bring her experience as a prosecutor, household name recognition, and skill as a debater to the ticket.”
While it is normal for news organizations to craft prewrites of expected stories in order to publish breaking news quickly, the structure of the second paragraph and quote attributed to Biden caused many reporters to suspect that the information came from the Biden campaign and provided under embargo for later publication.
The page was soon updated to remove the first two paragraphs, with an explanation in the form of an editor’s note: “Due to a technical error, an earlier version of this story mistakenly identified one of the women as Biden’s VP pick. We regret the error.”
A Politico spokesperson provided a longer explanation to the Washington Examiner: “Placeholder text was mistakenly published to the site. Our standard practice is to use ‘lorem ipsum'” – a dummy text having no meaning – “as placeholder text. In this instance, that did not happen. We regret the error and any confusion that it caused.”
The spokesperson confirmed that the quote in the mistakenly published material was not provided by the Biden campaign.
Biden press secretary T.J. Ducklo also said that the publication was an error. “Folks, this is not real. As the Vice President said earlier today, he looks forward to making his announcement in August,” he tweeted.
Folks, this is not real. As the Vice President said earlier today, he looks forward to making his announcement in August. https://t.co/eVP4OlqLUp
— TJ Ducklo (@TDucklo) July 28, 2020
