Paul Waldman has an excellent analysis of the tiresome elite media lament that the Kamala Harris isn’t giving them enough attention:
You can read many complaints about Harris’s lack of media accessibility (see here or here or here or here), though reporters seem unconcerned about the fact that Donald Trump does no interviews with them either. He talks to Fox News, other right-wing outlets, and dudebro podcasts, but he does not sit down with major newspapers or television networks, and somehow they don’t seem to mind. But as always, Democrats are held to a higher standard, scolded for failing to uphold the most elevated democratic norms while Republicans’ violation of those norms is taken for granted.
[…]
Let’s take a look at one New York Times column that I think reflects the prevailing sentiment. Written by Todd Purdum, who was a longtime Times political reporter and then moved on to positions at The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, it’s presented as friendly advice, explaining to Harris why she should want to give reporters the face time they crave. Purdum starts by saying it took too long for Harris to get to the meaty policy details in an answer she gave about the economy in an interview with a Philadelphia TV station. She needs to offer more “direct, succinct answers and explanations,” he writes, because “Being known as a straight shooter would also help persuade restive political elites, pundits and journalists that Ms. Harris is grappling with such scrutiny, and I think she’s apt to be rewarded in the end for it.”
This is unintentionally revealing. Purdum has little to say about whether Harris’ ideas are good ones; what he’s advising is that she put on a better show. She doesn’t have to be a straight shooter, she just has to appear to be a straight shooter, and then she’ll be rewarded not just by the voters but by the elites who pretend to care about substance, but actually don’t.
That is correct. This is mostly theatre criticism. When they get the chance to ask substantive questions they rarely ask them. They ask about the horse race or the accusations by the other side or typical gotcha questions. It’s why they are so happy with Trump’s press availability which is completely devoid of reason and substance and is all show.
As Waldman notes:
But if she follows Purdum’s advice, reporters will only reward her for it if they judge her to be a compelling performer and if they feel she has been properly deferential to them, which I suspect she and her campaign understand.
He also discusses the fact that all of this “advice” is delivered with an implicit threat — either do what we want you’ll pay. And we have a very recent example of what that looks like, don’t we?
Waldman references a piece by Judd Legum author of the popular newsletter Popular Information. Legum reports that he has received the hacked Trump emails, allegedly purloined by Iran, which were previously delivered to The Washington Post, Politico, The NY Times and Puck. (There are probably others.) They have all refused to publish these emails which are about the vetting processes for JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgham and apparently some legal matters.
Legum won’t publish the emails because he was peripherally involved in the Russian DNC hack back in 2016 and he doesn’t see any reason to perpetuate this sort of thing. I’m not sure I agree with that in this case. It just seems like one more way to benefit Trump at a time when the stakes are monumental. Nobody’s principles in matters like this are going to matter much when he starts rounding up his enemies.
But Legum does at least give a scathing indictment of the media’s outrageous behavior last time, when it was the much hated Hillary Clinton they went after as part of their years long quest to take her down. (And they wondered why she didn’t much like talking to them…)
Waldman writes:
According to Legum, in the waning days of the 2016 campaign, the New York Times published an incredible 199 articles mining Democratic emails — stolen by the Russian government and passed to Wikileaks — for juicy tidbits. But that obsessive coverage, the Times said in an editorial published that October, was actually Hillary Clinton’s fault. “Imagine if months ago, Mrs. Clinton had done her own giant information release,” they wrote. “Journalists and the public could have waded through them, discussed them, written about them — and by now, everyone would have long since moved on.”
Which of course they wouldn’t have; the press had long before decided that Clinton was corrupt, and they were going to paint her that way no matter what (you may have noticed that reporters’ passion for policing proper email practices was decidedly muted when it was Trump administration officials using private emails for government work).
We see some variant of that excuse again and again, questionable or even appalling news judgments rationalized with “This would have gone better for you if you had given us what we wanted,” an assertion that is not only implausible but echoes the abuser’s victim-blaming. Look what you made us do. You brought this on yourself.
Of course. And one thing we know for sure: they will never take even the slightest responsibility for their role in any of it.