Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is freaking out the news media. And it’s working for her.

By Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
January 14 at 12:05 PM

She’s been on the job for less than two weeks and already has generated more national press coverage than some members of Congress get in their whole careers.

Not that it’s been all positive, of course. Far from it.

The news media — and not just on the right — doesn’t quite know what to make of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old freshman representative from Queens who is a Democratic Socialist and proud of it.

Their inability to fit her neatly into a preexisting mold has resulted in a barrage of dubious stories, out-of-touch tweets and cable-news weirdness, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

And, in just about every case, Ocasio-Cortez has flipped critical coverage on its head and continued to make her points — not always with perfect accuracy but with pitch-perfect tone and effectiveness.

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