Big three Western news agencies member the Associated Press is facing scathing criticism from readers after appearing to play down the significance of presidential candidates speaking to the media.
In a piece published Friday night titled “Meet the press? Hold that thought. The candidate sit-down interview ain’t what it used to be,” AP contributor David Bauder argued that the fact that Kamala Harris “hasn’t given an interview and has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic choice to replace Joe Biden” isn’t that big a deal, and that “for journalists, the larger lesson is that their role as presidential gatekeepers is probably diminishing forever.”
The problem with interviews and news conferences, Bauder explained, is that they take away the “control” that campaigns, which have essentially become “marketing operations,” may depend on as far as campaign messaging goes.
Harris’ conscious camera shyness, attributed to her well-worn tendency for embarrassing word salad remarks, contrasts her sharply from her Republican opponent, who in addition to nonstop social media posting revels in speaking with the media every chance he gets, including, most recently, through a heated interview with the National Association of Black Journalists – which the vice president skipped.
The AP’s headline and messaging struck a nerve with Harris’s detractors, with the AP’s X post on the story ratioed by users peeved with the attempt to spin the candidate’s refusal to speak to media into something benign.
“This is not ok! And it’s journalists’ job to say so, to hold politicians accountable. I am embarrassed for the profession,” writer and columnist Amanda Fortini wrote in response to the AP piece.
“What exactly are you drawing salaries for? If talking to the media is irrelevant and unnecessary why exactly to we need a media? What is it you’d say ya do around here?” another person quipped, quoting the line of one of the Bobs in the 1999 Mike Judge comedy Office Space.
Screenshot of X users' angry replies to an Associated Press story suggesting that actually, Vice President Kamala Harris doesn't really need to speak to the media amid her presidential campaign.
© Photo : X
“The national press are now stumping for Harris to not do interviews. News organizations would rather protect Kamala Harris than make news. Astonishing,” someone else wrote.
“Your girl is afraid to answer any questions she didn’t get in advance and didn’t memorize the answer to. And our ‘press’, especially you, are the worst in the world,” another person suggested.
“You are one small mental leap away from saying: ‘Public servants don’t need to face the public, actually’,” someone else said.
“This is a pretty weak editorial. Obviously the campaigns want to control messaging. But the legacy media is under no obligation to play along. The reason Harris is continuing to hide from the press is because you guys are enabling her,” another user suggested.
“Is it really worth burning your credibility for this? I mean, for Kamala specifically? For a good candidate I get it, but for Kamala?” one person asked.
A spate of polling on a Harris-Trump matchup in November has flipped the script on months of polling favoring Trump against President Biden, whose ratings have declined precipitously amid handlers’ increasing in inability to hide his visibly declining mental acuity and physical state.
A string of polling over the past two-and-a-half weeks now shows Trump trailing behind Harris by a 1-4 point margin, including in key battleground states, notwithstanding the vice president’s lackluster record as Biden’s border czar, and controversial record as California’s attorney general, including her attempts to keep hundreds of people, most of them African Americans, incarcerated for non-violent offenses beyond their sentences to prop up the pool of available prison labor.