This opinion piece speaks for me, and for a lot of Democrats I know who aren't giving a minute of their time to concern trolls wringing their hands about why Kamala Harris hasn't given a press conference, especially when the ones wringing their hands are MAGA and corporate media, those not-too-strange bedfellows.
The Beltway press is angry that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t sat down with them to talk about things like policy. In their warped, archaic minds, they are important to the political process as a way to inform readers about the candidates. That...
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The Beltway press is angry that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t sat down with them to talk about things like policy. In their warped, archaic minds, they are important to the political process as a way to inform readers about the candidates.
That was a thing before social media and the internet, for sure. But today? The Beltway media is broken beyond repair, and we’re all doing fine learning about Harris on our own, thank you very much.
Margaret Sullivan, a columnist for The Guardian, echoed much of the press with her haughtily titled column “Kamala Harris must speak to the press,” published Tuesday. As Sullivan admits up front, Harris is riding high bypassing the traditional press, rising in the polls, and dominating media coverage.
“From a tactical or strategic point of view, there’s little reason” for Harris to give a sit-down interview or hold a press conference, Sullivan wrote.
She also admits the core reality of today’s Beltway media: “What’s more, when the vice-president has interacted with reporters in recent weeks, as in a brief ‘gaggle’ during a campaign stop, the questions were silly. Seeking campaign drama rather than substance, they centered on Donald Trump’s attacks or when she was planning to do a press conference.”
That should’ve been the end of the column. Harris doesn’t need the press, and when she does talk to them, they squander their opportunity on inanities. The end!
. . . .[Except it wasn't. More at the link, or open the spoiler] . . . .
This missive set off many a journalist, such as NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, who replied, “Jeff, this just can't be the stance for any journalist who cares about the profession or the nation to take.”
How breathtakingly arrogant! As if you can’t care about the nation if you don’t think Harris should bow to the whims of the press.
Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, joined the debate, responding to Folkenflik:
I understand why journalists want to take this stance. But the fact is we have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have [been] and continue to be[.] Watch how often the White House press briefings end up as embarrassing zoos. Consider for example at O’Keefe’s shouting at and hectoring the press secretary. Far too many questions have little to do with what Americans care about, and more reflect the egos of the reporters. Watching the farce of a faux press conference with Trump, with not a single question about what should’ve been the big story of the day, an alleged $10 million bribe from Egypt, and few questions about what is most important, the stakes of the [election and] Trump’s approach to governance.
And Jarvis hasn’t backed down. “When given a chance to ask questions, [the press sounds] like they're in a locker room, seeking quotes, not policy,” he added in another tweet. “This does nothing to inform the electorate. I know the argument about testing a candidate: but the press as currently configured aims for game & gotcha.”
What emerges from this debate shouldn’t be sympathy for a marginalized Beltway press. Instead, it should be anger at the imbalance in how that press has covered Democrats and Trump. Their coverage of Trump’s rallies normalizes his seconds of coherence, ignoring the hours of mad ramblings. They spent years fixated on President Joe Biden’s age, then wrote headlines like “The economy is strong but voters aren't feeling it. That's a problem for Biden.” They create the zeitgeist based on the narrative they want to push, and highlighting the success of Biden’s presidency was never in the cards.
But hey, they rush to their computers to file story after story about how this time, for real, Trump will finally be a changed man. We saw it after the July 13 assassination attempt, and we saw it when they credulously wrote headlines about Trump’s convention speech based on prepared remarks that he quickly abandoned. And they gloss over Trump’s rampant racism and sexism while eagerly awaiting his next childish schoolyard taunt against Harris. (“‘Krazy Kamala’ didn’t stick, so what will he try next? Details at 10!”)
Yes, Biden’s debate performance was a disaster, but so was Trump’s convention speech and his bizarrely slurred Monday conversation with billionaire Elon Musk. And that’s before we even get to the press’ inability to handle Trump’s pathological lies and fully grasp his promises of outright fascism.
Imagine if it wasn’t Trump but Harris who’d confidently declared that her opponent had “A.I.’d” the size of his crowds in photos. The press would engage in a multiweek feeding frenzy about her mental state. But with Trump? There’s the obligatory fact-check, but that’s about it.
Imagine if someone leaked Trump campaign emails and documents—would the press report on that with the same gusto as they did with the Hillary Clinton leaks in 2016? This time, we don’t have to imagine. It happened, and the Beltway media did exactly what we knew they would: refused to publish them. The same outlets that literally had live blogs of the Clinton leaks suddenly decided that their ethics forbade them from publishing whatever it was that they received.
And none have adequately explained why they’re handling the Trump emails differently, much less have apologized for the double standard.
Once more, this time with Harris, the Beltway media has decided to insert itself into the process, rather than report on it. How else do you explain The New York Times’ hissy fit over Biden’s refusal to sit for an interview with the outlet earlier this year, calling it a “dangerous precedent,” as if they were owed face time with the president? Biden didn’t owe them or any other media outlet ****, and neither does Harris.
And let’s take it one step further.
A presidential candidate’s job is to win. That’s it! So pray tell, how does talking to The New York Times or any other national media outlet help that cause? Either journalists will ask ridiculous, shallow questions and waste everyone’s time, or they’ll fish for a gotcha quote they can use to generate “controversy” and clicks. Or they might actually ask a policy question, which … no one cares. Literally, no one. For decades, Democrats issued reams of policy white papers, and no one cared. At best, those policy proclamations are ignored; at worst, they become attack fodder for the other party.
There are two candidates this election, and no one is basing their decision on the finer points of a policy platform. They are basing it on values. Republicans have known this and wielded it to great electoral success, and now Democrats are finally there. Watch that Walz clip above, and tell me how that doesn’t speak 1,000 times better to the heart of a Harris-Walz administration than some ridiculous question about what Harris would do with Lina Khan, head of the Federal Trade Commission.
All of this being said, Harris should talk to local newspapers and TV reporters in battleground markets. There is research that suggests that local coverage can very much stimulate voter results.
But the national Beltway press? They need to reckon with their failures. Until then? Harris can speak to them if it tactically suits her campaign, but otherwise, she doesn’t owe them anything.
Why do you always fall for the most obvious BS.
. Which party leads the legacy media
ChatGPT said:
In many countries, the term "legacy media" refers to traditional forms of media such as newspapers, television, and radio, which have historically been dominant in shaping public discourse. The leadership or influence in legacy media isn't typically tied to a single political party, but rather depends on various factors including ownership, editorial stance, and individual media outlets.
In the United States, for instance, legacy media organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN are often seen as having editorial perspectives that can vary from liberal to centrist. On the other hand, outlets like Fox News are known for their conservative perspectives. Ownership and funding structures also play a crucial role in shaping media content and priorities.
In other countries, the situation can be different. Media systems and the influence of political parties can vary widely depending on the country’s political and media landscape.
As everyday Americans tune in to watch Kamala Harris receive her party’s nomination, they should trust what they see with their own eyes—especially as D.C.’s chattering class tries to gaslight them.
And now, more than ever, we should ask who all of this—this punditry, this hobnobbing, this navel-gazing—is really for.
Because if this summer has revealed anything, it’s that, just like the Scott Walkers of yore, we are watching the national media short-circuit before our very eyes. They are insular. They are unprepared. And after years of watching Morning Joe and searching for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking to themselves. While this may seem ancillary to the main plotline of our national politics, the mainstream media own-goaling themselves out of civic relevance is a net negative for anyone who believes in the outcome of better, more representative, good government.
For years, largely because Republicans are better at working the refs and crying foul about any effort by the media to hold them accountable for their actions, the idea that the media are dyed-in-the-wool liberals has become the orthodoxy. Of course, the Beltway media are conservative. This is not a novel argument by any means: It’s an industry run by (increasingly reactionary) plutocrats, who reliably summon their charges to lead a highly effective, “But how will you pay for it?” pincer movement against anything resembling liberal policy. Meanwhile, there is seemingly no sin grievous enough to earn a Republican the same sort of nullifying skepticism—the Trumpists who aided and abetted the former president’s attempt to overturn a lawful election remain in the good graces of America’s cable news bookers.
Still, we need to acknowledge that the media are conservative in the most traditional, unideological sense of the word: They are clinging to a status quo, their status quo, that has not matched our reality since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and the Tea Party emerged as the energized manifestation of Ronald Reagan’s 1980s fever dreams. Their rules, their conventional wisdom, their savvy takes become more stale, more detached from normal life, and more cartoonish with every passing day. . . .
Let’s consider the past few weeks in the life of The New York Times. This summer, the paper of record demanded President Joe Biden’s departure from the race. After getting their wish, they had criticism galore, which they expressed by pushing full stories on crystals-loving Marianne Williamson’s complaints that the party needed an open nomination process (without regard for the legal and logistical impossibility of such a process), followed by multiple columns chastising the elevation of the current Vice President, Kamala Harris, to the top of the ticket as a “coronation” (again, despite the fact that she was the only Democrat in the United States who could actually surmount the aforementioned legal and logistical challenges).
They got what they wanted but, oh no, not how they wanted it! And when the veepstakes didn’t go to their precise specifications they then found a half dozen of Minnesota’s nearly six million residents to say they do not love Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s pick for a running mate, even as his favorability jumped 20 points after his announcement. Finger on the pulse, baby!
