An Interesting Perspective on the Change from Liberal Journalism to Partisan Journalism

Years ago my newsroom team and I which were working at a TV station in Boise, ID began a series of investigative reports into then Mayor Brent Coles after we were tipped off to possible corruption.? Coles had a PR Flak who obviously did not like those reports and at one point accused me of being politically biased against him.? I responded by spending an afternoon looking up every script in every newscast I could find over the past year which the Coles administration would consider to be a positive story.? It came to more than 300 pages as some stories would run in multiple newscasts in a single day. ?Printed copies were delivered in person by one of my reporters to her the next day.

My point to the mayor's office was that our investigation wasn’t biased or personal.? I was doing my very best to be completely fair and unbiased with Coles in our overall news coverage.? If there was indeed corruption in the mayor’s office, however, I felt my viewers should be made aware of that.? I left the station before all the stories and follow up reports fully played out over a period of more than two years, but those reports caught the attention of the feds and Coles was prosecuted, convicted and jailed for corruption after I left.

I thought of that investigation as I was listening to the ‘Real Clear Politics’ podcast on Sirius/XM the other day.? RCP’s Washington Bureau Chief Carl Cannon was making a point about distinguishing liberal journalism from partisan journalism in talking about recent coverage of Kamala Harris.? He pointed out that journalists tend to be liberal but can still report the news in an unbiased and fair manner.? He felt much of the news coverage of Harris had become partisan in support of her, which is the opposite of unbiased and fair.

I think he makes an interesting point.? One of the most telling examples of partisan journalism is coverage of Harris as the ‘Border Czar’.

Three years ago when Harris received a assignment to help with the crisis on the southern border from President Biden, many news organizations including the website Axios labeled Harris the Border Czar.? Now, many including Axios are saying she was never the Border Czar … but Axios went one step further.? It issued corrections for their three year old stories which used the term.? Why weren’t those stories corrected way back then?? Because no one cared way back then.? Now Harris is running for president and does not want to be associated with a toxic issue for the Biden administration no matter what her personal involvement.? That’s partisan journalism.

It’s not just the border.? Harris said in the past that she would also support ending deportations and eliminating ICE.? If she still believes that, she hasn’t said so publicly.? She is on video a few years back saying she would ban fracking.? Her campaign now says she would not ban fracking.? She once supported Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ plan to eliminate private health insurance.? Now, not so fast!? A website which rated politicians by ideology labeled Harris when she was in the Senate as the most liberal U.S. Senator.? They reportedly took it down on last week. Why?

It’s obvious what’s going on here.? Harris and her positions in the past were so unpopular even to Democrats that they rejected her candidacy for the 2020 nomination.? She didn’t even make it to Iowa. ??Now having been anointed as her party’s nominee, Harris seems willing to change whatever past position she had in the past to win the White House.? It also looks like some in the media are all too happy to help by ignoring her substantial flip-flops when they should be questioning her and others about them. Partisan journalism.

Don't get me wrong, Harris is enjoying a honeymoon bump which will last through the convention, and I have no problem with that. My problem is that I don't have any idea how Harris would govern as president, and I don't think you do either. That's where a probing, vibrant mainstream news media should come in. I'm seeing no signs of that yet.

Pretty much every voter who Harris needs to win over to pull ahead in this race is to the right of her politically. That means that Kamala Harris' biggest opponent isn't Donald Trump. It's archived news footage of interviews with her espousing left wing positions. Good luck putting those genies back in the bottle, because I guarantee you'll see them played over and over again in campaign ads, sowing doubts with the moderate voters she needs to win.

If voters suspect they are getting partisan journalism about her where news outlets are even correcting or changing stories they did on her years ago, they are not going to trust it. That does nothing to help Harris and a lot to hurt journalism.

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