Teen Vogue republished an article from Vogue on Monday that celebrated the “historic” passage of a $750 billion climate change, health care, and tax bill.
As AIM has reported about several previous Teen Vogue articles, the outlet chose to highlight its own political views — in lock-step with the Democratic Party — as the only way to believe, and painted Republicans as an obstacle to their goals.
But for the most part, there was no reporting done in the piece – just a series of self-congratulatory quotes from President Joe Biden and other Democrats.
“Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests, voting to lower the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance, and everyday energy costs and reduce the deficit, while making the wealthiest corporations finally pay their fair share,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday.
“‘We’ve had an extraordinary six weeks,’ [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer told the New York Times yesterday, while emphasizing the bill was ‘the most comprehensive piece of legislation affecting the American people in decades.’”
And then the piece added its own take — mostly that
“The revenue raised from these measures will contribute to what is arguably the most important victory of all: A historic investment in combatting climate change,” Teen Vogue wrote. “Not only will it be a feather in the cap of the Biden presidency, but it will also mark the most significant action the U.S. has ever taken in that area. The bill will put Biden on track to achieve his goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030, besides also offering sweeping tax rebates for those buying electric vehicles and support for those switching to energy suppliers that primarily use wind and solar power.”
They tied up their cheerleading saying “a number of nonpartisan research groups have said that the measures will cut U.S. carbon emissions by more than a third this decade,” but fails to mention that “a number of” means two, the two they’ve linked, and that the second of the two is from a group called Energy Innovation, which labels itself as “nonpartisan” but of course it has a vested interest in legislation that will further its work in clean energy.
The piece does nothing to look at the bill itself or consider what it means for the average American, or establish what any of the holdups were despite the vote requiring Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the tiebreaker because without her, voting was split 50 to 50. This has consequences, as its large readership is made up largely of teenagers and preteens – the upcoming newest voters, who will be expected to make decisions based on the information they have. The magazine’s stated goal is to “educate the influencers of tomorrow.” But “educating” by way of effusive, unquestioning praise, is not educating — it’s propaganda.