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Column: When The Media Can't Find a Left-Wing Label for Kamala Harris
Even battle-hardened conservatives can find it shocking when Democrat-boosting reporters fail to identify Kamala Harris as a “liberal,” or a “progressive,” or even dare one say it, a “left-wing radical.”
In a new Media Research Center study of ABC’s World News Tonight since Harris was anointed in a back room as Biden’s replacement on July 21, Rich Noyes discovered ABC’s evening-news crew has never applied an ideological label to her. In Kamala’s first week as the nominee, CBS cited her “liberal voting record” and NBC reported she was a “self-described progressive prosecutor."
But through September 4, ABC’s correspondents never called Harris either a “liberal” or a “progressive.” Instead, eight stories included clips of Republicans (usually Donald Trump) attacking Harris’s liberal record. The ABC team also never criticized Harris’s handling of top issues like painful inflation or illegal immigration.
One way that liberal journalists put a protective bubble around their candidate is to pretend she’s somehow above ideology. They only suggest that this is an attack coming from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, and therefore it’s just negative advertising, not news.
On a debate-preview edition of The NPR Politics Podcast, three NPR journalists talked for 18 minutes and barely touched on the labels. Near the end, political analyst Domenico Montanaro typically combined it with Trump: “Trump has sort of started to settle on a message against Harris...that she's inauthentic, weak, and too liberal.”
The only other label was White House reporter Asma Khalid describing the aftermath of the Trump-Biden debate in June: “There was some criticism, particularly from folks on the Left, that the moderators, CNN, did not fact-check the candidates in real time, and they thought that that was to Biden's detriment.” But that’s not labeling Harris.
On Debate Day, NPR’s Morning Edition aired a three-and-a-half minute story titled “Trump likes to attack Harris's native California. Its politicians say bring it on.” Once again, we’re told Trump unfairly defines Harris and San Francisco.
San Francisco-based reporter Marisa Lagos began: “Trump didn’t mince words at the Economic Club of New York last week, making false claims about Harris and her record.” Trump called her a “Marxist” who nearly destroyed San Francisco. But nowhere in this story is there a “liberal,” or ”progressive,” or “radical.”
But there are two references to “conservative media”! Lagos oozed: “After years of being bashed by conservative media and politicians, California politicians are on the offense this election year.” Lagos interviewed San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Sen. Laphonza Butler, and Gov. Gavin Newsom, and none of these lefties are described ideologically. But Newsom fights back in “conservative media.”
In addition, there were two Harris soundbites from her convention speech. We’re told Harris rarely talks about San Francisco, or her birthplace in the “East Bay.” That’s Lagos and NPR evading the fact that Harris was born and raised in the radical hotbed of Berkeley. Instead, they aired audio of Harris saying she grew up in a community based on “kindness, respect, and compassion.” They think that’s synonymous with liberalism.
On the same show, NPR anchor A Martinez interviewed former RNC operative Doug Heye for four minutes, but there were no labels for Harris, because the only topic was how Trump needed to avoid being rude or "personal" to the female candidate.
Harris-backing reporters are going to pretend she is somehow above ideology, as if she’s a guru like Oprah or how Michelle Obama presents herself. They’re not holding Harris accountable for anything that went wrong under Biden, or for her radical stands before she was vice president.
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