Associated Press:
News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it
But one prominent journalist, Jesse Eisinger, senior reporter and editor at ProPublica, suggested the outlets could have told more than they did. While it’s true that past Vance statements about Trump are easily found publicly, the vetting document could have indicated which statements most concerned the campaign, or revealed things the journalists didn’t know.
Once it is established that the material is accurate, newsworthiness is a more important consideration than the source, he said.
“I don’t think they handled it properly,” Eisinger said. “I think they overlearned the lesson of 2016.”
Brian Beutler/”Off Message” on Substack:
Trump Email Hack Is A Moment Of Reckoning For Him—Or The News Media
Outlets like the New York Times owe their readers frenzied coverage of his campaign's emails, or a mea culpa for their history-altering emails fixation in 2016
This stands in untenable contrast to the way these same outlets responded to the hacking-and-leaking of Democratic emails in 2016. A hallmark of Trump-era journalism has been the media’s institutional defensiveness of its conduct in the run up to Trump’s first election. Precious few reporters have retrospectively acknowledged that their 2016 fixation on emails (both the ones on Hillary Clinton’s personal server, and the ones that were stolen from her colleagues) fell beneath professional standards. Most reporters, and nearly all decision makers, insist they did nothing wrong—at most they’ll allow that their failures that cycle were garden variety.
“When we learn important things, to not publish is a political act,” the Times’s then-executive editor Dean Baquet insisted in retrospect. “The calculation cannot be, we’re just not going to publish because that would screw up American politics. You know, at that point, I will go into business as like a campaign adviser to people and not as a journalist.”
Two election cycles later, you can be forgiven for wondering whether this was a put on.
Anand Giridharadas/”The.Ink” on Substack:
Give our people back
The emotional undercurrent of the Walz phenomenon
It’s being discussed more and more, but I truly think one of the most powerful and still underrated forces in the election is going to be the joy and relief millions feel watching Coach Walz and imagining that their dads and uncles and neighbors could wake up from their hatred.
An argument against hatred and extremism and misogyny and resentment is powerful. But a living embodiment of someone who could have gone that way but didn’t — this is a force all its own.
It’s very hard to rebut and fact-check and out-argue and deprogram these men who fell prey to Rupert Murdoch’s profit lust.
But when you see an older white guy who is just happy and can’t wait for the future — wow. It is going to burrow deep into many people with lost relatives.
Brian Beutler/”Off Message” on Substack:
Kamala Harris's Rise Refutes An Influential Democratic Theory Of Politics
A revisionist (and correct) retelling of Joe Biden's rise to the presidency, and political collapse.
The New York Times-Siena poll, which had been nightmare fuel for Democrats throughout Biden’s candidacy, now shows Harris with a significant lead (and majority support) in the blue-wall swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And if you put much stock in crosstabs (which arguably you should not) the data suggests she’s accomplished this in a way that will improve the efficiency of the Democratic coalition, reducing the pro-Republican bias of the Electoral College. Harris is running ahead of Biden’s 2020 performance with white voters of all education levels, including non-college whites.
But to me the most interesting thing isn’t her surge in head-to-head surveys, or even the dramatic spike in her approval polling. It’s that her candidacy, all on its own, has driven a large correction in economic sentiment.
Marc Jacob/”Stop the Presses” on Substack:
Good news: Not all journalism outlets suck
Legacy media are failing us, but ProPublica and others give us hope
It was no fluke that ProPublica won the Public Service award at this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for its revelations about how right-wing billionaires secretly lavished expensive trips on Supreme Court justices.
The unethical conduct by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito could have been exposed by other outlets if they’d only looked. But major media’s coverage of the Supreme Court has been a scandal over recent decades. National Public Radio’s legal affairs reporter, Nina Totenberg, was a close friend of one of the justices she covered, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And the Washington Post was so lax that even when it found out Alito and his wife had an upside-down American flag flying at their home after the Jan. 6 coup attempt, the Post decided it wasn’t a story and didn’t tell its readers. ProPublica, on the other hand, has aggressively examined how the court has protected its status as an unaccountable institution.
ProPublica conducts high-impact investigations of other aspects of our political system too – including the far-right Project 2025 to build a force of bureaucratic shock troops that would impose radical religious restrictions on American citizens.
Peter Wehner/The Atlantic:
Trump Can’t Deal With Harris’s Success
The more his Democratic rival succeeds, the louder he rages.
Since May, when Biden was the nominee, Harris has gained seven points in Pennsylvania, five points in Wisconsin, and four points in Michigan. The Democratic National Convention, which should give her an additional boost, begins next week. By the time it ends, fewer than 75 days will be left until the November 5 election.
The data are pretty clear. Harris has electrified the Democratic Party; a Wall Street Journal survey found that 93 percent of Democrats now support her. Among Democrats, voter satisfaction with their choice of candidate has increased a staggering 27 percent in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan since May. So-called double-haters—voters who are dissatisfied with both major-party choices—have for now broken for Harris. In addition, positive views of Harris have increased 11 percent in less than a month. As Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for the Times, put it, “On question after question, the poll finds that voters don’t seem to have any major reservations about her.” She’s not without vulnerabilities, especially the charge that she’s too liberal, but the race is now hers to lose.
David Rothkopf/Daily beast:
Ignore the Media Haters. The ‘Harris Honeymoon’ Is Far From Over
The media is desperate to find fault in Kamala Harris’ campaign, ignoring how terrible a Trump victory would be, as well as how formidably well Harris and Tim Walz are performing.
You’ve got media bigwigs suggesting it is now time for her to change her campaign style to something more “serious” despite the fact that a) her campaign has been serious and substantive from the outset and b) her campaign has been a phenomenon, by many metrics one of the most successful launches we have ever seen in American politics. More substantive? Time for “more meat on the bone?” What?
In every speech she has given she talks about principles and policies. About guaranteeing women bodily autonomy. About reducing gun violence. About lowering the costs of drugs and stopping corporate price gouging. About defending voting rights and democracy. About fairer taxes. About defending ourselves against our enemies worldwide. About preserving our alliances. About the need for an immediate ceasefire and the return of the hostages in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Cliff Schecter on Josh Hawley:
