For the past few weeks, Americans have had front-row seats to a national press behaving badly. From the night of the June 27 presidential debate, it seems like much of the mainstream media has united in an active effort to ensure the ousting of a presidential candidate from his party’s ticket—starting with an unprecedented New York Times editorial.
We’ve seen flurries of stories quoting anonymous sources with reckless abandon, including from sources who claim they believe President Joe Biden continuing as the Democratic nominee will imperil democracy. When I was in journalism school at the University of Southern Mississippi, we were taught to use anonymous sources scarcely and only when absolutely necessary (which is our policy here at the Mississippi Free Press).
It’s been particularly shocking watching the press focus so relentlessly on one man’s age and debate at the same time as they have seemingly moved on from another man’s 34 felony convictions and the more than 30 documented lies and false claims he shared at the debate and at least 22 others he told at last night’s RNC speech.
Much of the coverage has, at times, seemed as if news reporters were working hand-in-hand with certain Democratic politicians to achieve their favored outcome.
Now, as a news editor, I’m not taking a public stance on what the Democratic Party or President Joe Biden should do; contrary to apparent popular belief, that’s not the job of the press.
Conversations about a public leader’s ability to carry out the job are important and necessary, and the press has a role to play in reporting on those conversations, but that shouldn’t look like a holy crusade. And right now, it does.
The national press didn’t even let a small matter like an assassination attempt on the Republican former president and 2024 presidential nominee’s life take them off the Biden story for more than a day or two.
As 1619 Project creator and New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted on July 3: “As media, we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans thinks is important and *how* they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it is not so. If Americans don’t recognize the crisis our democracy is facing, that’s not their fault, it is ours.”
In the midst of all the speculation and media furor over the fate of Biden’s presidential campaign (a topic about which I have no predictions to offer here because I did not go to college to be a medium), a lot of people have been paying more attention to Vice President Kamala Harris. One particularly amusing clip of her has gone viral, becoming the subject of memes, pop remixes and even TikTok dances.
“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” she asks, laughing. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
On this day one year ago, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” pic.twitter.com/Vh5OTv3XlF
— Know Your Meme (@knowyourmeme) May 10, 2024
She delivered those remarks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in May 2023 while leading a swearing-in ceremony. But it wasn’t just some silly throwaway line; in context, she was relaying a colloquialism her mother would use to stress the importance of understanding history and… context.
In this fast-paced media environment, where mainstream news organizations treat the happenings around us as episodic events more like disparate storylines in a soap opera than interconnected events, context often gets lost.
But putting the news in context is one of the main responsibilities of the press. We are supposed to be informing people, not just about what happened, but how and why and what brought us to this point.
That’s why, when we report on efforts to pass private-school vouchers, we also report on how the history of segregation academies and resistance to racial integration in public schools first lit that fuse all those decades ago. That’s why, when we report on abortion and the Dobbs ruling, we recount the decades of efforts to shape a federal judiciary that would overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states like Mississippi to outlaw it. That’s why, when we report on Jackson’s water woes, we report on the history of government divestment on all levels—local, state and federal—that led to it.
Providing context is part of the bread and butter of the job of journalism. Forcing political outcomes, on the other hand, is not—whether it’s national reporters trying to oust Biden from the Democratic ticket or state reporters in Mississippi trying to entice lawmakers into passing Medicaid expansion (or to dissuade them from doing so).
It is valid and serves a legitimate public interest for the media to ask questions about a public official’s ability to do his or her job (regardless of age). But reporters shouldn’t look like gluttonous pigs grunting at the trough.
And lately, that’s what much of the national Beltway press has looked like.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
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