One of the most significant public debates in the Harris-Trump race so far has been not between the candidates, but rather among journalists.
The divide: Many reporters and editors are faulting Vice President Harris for not spending quality time with, well, reporters and editors. But there are dissenters in the newsroom.
The criticism has been a GOP talking point nearly since the start of Harris’ candidacy — other right-wing points of contention have been her laugh, her name, her ethnicity — but lately some highly respected journalists have weighed in as well.
Margaret Sullivan summed it up in the Guardian:
“As journalist Jay Caspian Kang recently put it — under the New Yorker headline How Generic Can Kamala Harris Be? — the candidate hasn’t explained ‘why she has changed her mind on fracking, which she once said should be banned, and has wobbled on Medicare for all, which she once supported, or what she plans to do with Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is said to be unpopular among some of Harris’ wealthy donors; or much about how a Harris administration would handle the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.’ And that’s just a start.
“I don’t have a lot of confidence that the broken White House press corps would skillfully elicit the answers to those and other germane questions if given the chance. But Harris should show that she understands that, in a democracy, the press — at least in theory — represents the public, and that the sometimes adversarial relationship between the press and government is foundational.
“The pressure on Harris to open up is growing. It’s a constant complaint on Fox News, both by Fox anchors and by Republican politicians, including her rival Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance.
“And mainstream media, perhaps tiring of being so unnaturally positive, has picked up on it, too. “‘Time’s just about up on Harris to avoid this becoming a thing,’ warned Benjy Sarlin of Semafor. He was responding to a front-page story in the New York Times about Harris’ inaccessibility, whose headline included another ominous phrase, describing her campaign as spirited but ‘shrouded from public scrutiny.’
“Hear the drumbeat building?”
Veteran journalist Jeff Jarvis took issue with Sullivan:
“I agree with Margaret almost always. But here, not. It is time that we as media critics face head on how broken the press is. It does not perform a constructive and productive role. To the contrary, it has been damaging to democracy. Facing the press is not a proper test. The press fails its tests.”
He added on X (formerly Twitter): “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media? No. She can choose many ways to communicate her stands with others outside the old press and with the public directly. The old press can and should be bypassed.”
David Folkenflik, media reporter for NPR, responded, “Jeff, this just can’t be the stance for any journalist who cares about the profession or the nation to take.”
I hold Sullivan and Folkenflik in the highest esteem (full disclosure: I have worked with David on a couple of stories), but my sympathies lie with Jarvis.
I agree that, given no other considerations, Harris should engage reporters in some fashion. Journalists are not wrong to say such interactions are an invaluable element of a democracy.
But to posit reporters as soldiers of democracy doesn’t scan. Even Sullivan allows that the White House press corps is “broken.” And Jay Caspian Kang’s argument that the press needs to know the fate of Lina Khan? In what universe will a political reporter ask that question? Benjy Sarlin warning “Time’s just about up” prompts the question, “Says who?”
Reporters of course prize their adversarial role, but a critic might note that that stance is in service of attracting eyeballs, not fostering understanding.
I’ve worked in political campaigns and in Congress — a decade, taken together — but I’ve happily spent most of my career in newsrooms. I must confess there are very few political reporters I would hire to work in a campaign. You can write an eye-catching story about a political campaign without knowing how to manage one.
The current debate only deepens that conviction.
Campaigns are many things, but they are possibly first and foremost a doctorate-level resource management challenge. A campaign has a nearly infinite to-do list to take on with limited resources. The deadline is fixed. Time passes mercilessly.
In my first political campaign, I generally started my 14-hour day with a to-do list of 20 items, all critical, all needing resolution that day. I typically managed four or five — and perhaps only one if I was on the road. The remaining 15 festered, becoming bigger problems as a result of the day’s neglect, then poured into tomorrow with whatever else new was added to the mix.
And that was a congressional race.
Harris became a candidate on July 21, with little advance notice, and four weeks to secure the nomination and launch a presidential campaign before the Democratic Convention: zero to 60 in no seconds. Its success to date is little short of breathtaking. A gold-medal-worthy pivot.
If journalists want to take issue with this four-week-old campaign, they have some obligation to tell us what the Harris-Walz campaign should have dropped in favor of preparing for and meeting with the press.
Shall we drop that meeting with United Auto Workers leadership? Cancel the North Carolina trip? If reporters are not prepared to enunciate that calculation, or at least acknowledge that trade-off, their criticism reads like the pleadings of a special interest.
In 2024, candidates have extraordinary outreach tools at their disposal; those tools will only get better. In truth, many of the available vehicles offer citizens better and more useful information than they get from the mainstream press. Yes, that information will be molded by the candidates in many cases, but isn’t that what campaigns are for? And isn’t there also a sea of contradictory information available?
In this Tower of Babel, citizens could use an arbiter to make sense of the flood of information and help them make informed decisions. The subtext for the current newsroom debate is whether the political press is up to the job.