If you can get away with Scripted Events – and the media are happily acting as an extension of your public-relations team...
By Philip Klein
If we take the broader view of what has unfolded in this year's election, we are left with one, big, stunning example of media malpractice after another. At the start of the year, the media spent months trying to cover up President Biden’s declining mental capacity and attempted to “debunk” any efforts by conservative media to point out the obvious. Then, when the debate happened – and they could no longer cover it up – they worked 24/7 with Democrat operatives to hound him out of the race, even seizing on some of the same examples of mental decline that just weeks earlier they had dismissed as “cheap fakes.”
They then pointed to their focus on Biden’s mental decline as evidence that they were unbiased – despite the fact that they were merely joining their Democrat friends in lobbying for a stronger ticket.A further indication that they should not be given the benefit of the doubt is that once they got their way and Biden dropped out, they stopped seriously covering his cognitive health. Somehow the very real problem that our president is suffering severe mental decline during a global crisis suddenly doesn’t matter – because the political conundrum has been solved. The subject that dominated news coverage for weeks suddenly isn’t a story anymore.
Meanwhile, since Harris was tapped as the obvious replacement for Biden, we’ve seen wall-to-wall and unadulterated fawning over her by the media.
There’s the first wave of adoring coverage that permeates every corner of the media. The New York Times even quoted an expert who declared,
Then there is the secondary coverage – which cites the initial laudatory coverage as evidence that Harris’s launch and rollout has been so brilliant and smooth.
In the meantime, we are quietly told that Harris has reversed herself on a whole slate of the long-held positions she took during her first run for president, when she:
- supported the "Green New Deal;
- called for kicking 180 million people off of private insurance (by eliminating private healthcare coverage);
- vowed to ban fracking and offshore drilling; and
promised to confiscate AR-15s.
I say we are told this, because Harris has not stated any of this publicly – or been asked to explain any of these dramatic reversals.
Instead, we are just told that this is now the case because “campaign officials” said so.
Instead, we are just told that this is now the case because “campaign officials” said so.
Last week I was telling people Harris won’t be able to get away with this, because if there is one thing that the media care about more than even their ideological commitments, it is access. And they tend to turn sour on candidates who don’t provide access. And yet the media is so pathetic, so sniveling, so eager to prop up Harris, that they don’t care.
Instead they continue to sit back like fools, and report on her interactions with Girl Scouts rather than demanding she answer questions.
She’s been a candidate for weeks, and has not held a single Press Conference – or done a single interview.
I was a conservative journalist during the Obama era, and I have to say, even he had periods of negative coverage. I cannot recall anything like what we are now witnessing.
Politico’s Playbook's Wednesday, August 7th story entitled “Why Harris Isn’t Taking Questions,” is yet another media meta-example of how "amazing" her campaign is, and how there’s no sense in messing with a winning streak.
It notes that Kamala has been informally chatting with reporters on her plane "off the record," which, Dave Weigel surmises, is why we haven’t been hearing more complaints about access.
"Ever since Biden passed Harris the baton, news organizations have been pushing the vice president’s team for a sit-down interview. According to two people familiar with the campaign’s thinking, there are ongoing discussions about a joint interview with Harris and Walz prior to the convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago.
"But on the whole, Harris’ top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters.
"One longtime Harris ally suggested to West Wing Playbook that Harris could hold off on big interviews until after Labor Day."
This makes campaign reporters look even worse.Essentially, it means that access is all about their own insecurities rather than about actually doing their jobs and informing the public by asking a candidate for the presidency to answer challenging questions about her positions on important issues.
If you listen to the real-time accounts of those closest to Secretariat’s stunning 1973 win at The Belmont Stakes, you hear everybody saying he was going way too fast early on and couldn’t possibly maintain his speed throughout the whole race. And yet, somehow, he managed. Watching the media trip all over themselves to boost Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy – without asking any critical questions of her – I keep thinking the same thing: The media can’t possibly maintain this pace for the rest of the election, right?
On the other hand, what if they are able to?Perhaps the most damning indictment of the media comes from the Harris Campaign itself.
“What is the incentive for her [to take more questions]?” Politico quotes somebody close to the campaign as saying.
“She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out.”
“She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out.”
Exactly – unadulterated fawning and wall-to-wall coverage of her by the media.
If you can get away with scripted events – and the media are happily behaving as a mere extension of your public-relations team – why bother?
Philip Klein is Editor of National Review Online. Follow him at @philipaklein
