Can Democracy Survive the Mainstream Media?

The Harris campaign isn't waiting around to find out

Photo by Rafael Arkenau on Unsplash

Politico Playbook is a daily morning newsletter by DC insiders for DC insiders. Because “everybody” in the Beltway reads it, Playbook projects a self-conscious awareness of its own importance as it shapes accepted wisdom about politics.

Last Sunday, Politico decided that the Harris campaign’s planned October media blitz wasn’t actually a media blitz because in their view it largely sidestepped the legacy press that is an essential component of the Beltway’s incestuous mix of reporters and sources. Here is Playbook’s snarky lede:

After avoiding the media for neigh on her whole campaign, VP Kamala Harris is . . . still largely avoiding the media.

How dare she?

What nerve her campaign has to prioritize pop culture figures like Alexandra Cooper (who Rolling Stone called “Gen-Z’s Barbara Walters”), Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert, and the cast of The View (created by the original Barbara Walters).

The Harris campaign’s decision to reach voters where they get their information—through podcasts and entertainment programs—is both an indictment of the mainstream press and an acknowledgement of their increasing irrelevance.

Which is to say it’s an indictment of the Beltway culture that Politico represents. So Playbook hit back by self-referentially asserting how their criticism of the campaign’s strategy is “not the Playbook lead [the Harris] team is gonna want to read this morning.”

As if the campaign exists to please Beltway insiders.

Politico’s annoyance with Harris must be deep enough for them to overlook portions of her schedule that blatantly contradict their claim that she is ignoring traditional media. Politico acknowledges the Harris media blitz includes the sit-down interview with 60 Minutes that aired Monday and a Univision town hall event planned for tomorrow, while her running mate appeared on Fox News Sunday. Nonetheless, they accuse her of ducking Beltway journalists.

Their problem with Harris appears to be that “most of these are not the types of interviews that are going to press her on issues she may not want to talk about.”

Press her on issues she may not want to talk about.

Not ask her questions to illuminate her positions. Not engage in a deeper understanding of where she wants to lead the country. Press her on issues she may not want to talk about.

Is there a better description of what the legacy press has become?

Recall what Harris was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash late last summer, during her first televised interview as the Democratic nominee. Does she regret insisting that Biden is fit to serve another four years? Does she still believe that Bidenomics is a success? What does she say to Trump’s claim that she happened to turn Black?

Can you blame her for not wanting to talk about these things?

Politico readers may flatter themselves by thinking these are hard-hitting questions that press her on issues, but in doing so they demonstrate how they have lost the ability or the inclination to distinguish light from heat.

Contrast this with the substantive conversation Harris had about women’s rights, reproductive freedom, and the meaning of family on Cooper’s podcast.

The conceit underlying Playbook’s trivializing of Harris’ media outreach is that only insiders get to set the terms of the election. If they were more self-reflective than self-important, they might recognize that their hold on the public discourse is slipping away and they are failing the public at a moment that is crying out for real journalism.

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The criticism of Harris’ media strategy conveniently ignores the fact that Donald Trump operates entirely by his own rules.

That 60 Minutes interview with Harris was supposed to be one-half of an election edition that was to feature an interview with Trump as well. But Trump backed out, then denied he had ever accepted the invitation. In the opening of the 60 Minutes piece, Scott Pelley explained that, in fact, Trump had agreed to participate and then offered “shifting explanations” for pulling out, including a complaint that CBS would fact-check the interview.

Why is this not the story of how the campaigns are approaching the press?

As we saw in the vice presidential debate when J.D. Vance was corrected by moderator Margaret Brennan for making false claims about Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, the Trump campaign cannot exist outside a reality of its own creation.

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” Vance protested.

It is the job of the press to call this out. It is their responsibility to explain to the public not just that Trump is deceitful, but that he is fabricating a world that does not exist—a world where inflation is rampant, crime is uncontrollable, the border is open, Covid was not his responsibility, and Biden’s policies are devastating the country.

It is the job of the press to explain why Trump pressures reporters into agreeing not to check facts.

It is the job of the press to hammer home how Trump seeks shelter on Fox News where he is free to operate in a world of his own design. Tim Walz appeared on Fox News. You don’t see Trump or Vance appearing on MSNBC.

If the press framed the election this way, the public might begin to understand that the Trump campaign cannot withstand contact with the real world, and how Trump is trying to fabricate an alternative Kamala Harris, an alternative Joe Biden, an alternative Democratic party, and alternative economic and social facts to convince voters to reject the world where they actually live, which is a much less dramatic and dangerous place than Trump wants them to believe.

This is the real story of how the campaigns operate, but you can’t expect people to see it unless the press leads them there.

Democracy requires good information to function effectively. That means reporters identifying and explaining efforts to deceive. It means reporters stepping out of their comfort zone and shining a bright light on the asymmetrical way the campaigns approach the truth.

The legacy press will protest that coverage like this is unbalanced—and it is—but the asymmetries are built into the political environment.

If authoritarianism comes to America because voters return to power a convicted felon who convinces enough people to invest in his false reality, it will be in no small part because established reporters failed to adequately explain his deception and fraud.

There is still time for the press to rise to the moment, but it will not get there by indulging petty grievances. This is no time for Beltway games, where insiders scold a campaign for neglecting them. Journalists have important work to do. Like Republicans who refuse to confront the former president in the hope that he will return them to power, reporters who let their egos stand in the way of doing their jobs will share responsibility if democracy falls.

Nothing is going to return us to the day when Beltway insiders set the news agenda. The Harris campaign made the right strategic choice by making her available to a wide range of information outlets viewed collectively by tens of millions of people. But if they no longer dominate the news environment, the legacy press still could work its way back to relevance and perform a critically important function by telling the story of what’s happening in this country.

If they’re just going to complain about being overlooked, the Harris campaign is wise to ignore them.