Politico has made quite a splash since it was founded in 2007, in part because of a relentless focus on creating buzzworthy stories. Its pursuit of that goal has often resulted in coverage that pushes various pathologies of the political media to a new level. At this point, no publication can match Politico’s hyper-focused coverage of politics and process, minute-by-minute accounts of the news cycle, and personality-driven coverage of politicians.

One especially disturbing example of the way Politico has supercharged news media pathologies is its formalization of the all-too-common practice of faux journalistic mind-reading. As I’ve shown over and over again, reporters and pundits frequently make claims about politicians’ inner thoughts that can’t possibly be verified in order to create dramatic narratives. But these claims are usually made without quotation marks. Politico has now started to write whole articles centered on fake inner monologues attributed to politicians.

Back in March, I pointed out that Politico editor John F. Harris and reporter Jonathan Martin had written an article titled “What Obama said and what he meant” that purported to provide a “translation” of the President’s statements at a press conference.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown wrote a similar piece titled “Reading Barack Obama’s mind on health care” (via TPM). In it, she writes that she did “a little imaginary spelunking in the caves of the presidential mind and came up with this take on what Obama might really be thinking when it comes to health care.” In other words, she made it up.

If this is the new model for political journalism, we’re in trouble.