This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Is mainstream media old news for Harris and Trump?’
Marc Filippino
Do you have questions about the 2024 election for our Swamp Notes panellists? Well, here is your chance to ask them. On September 12th, join Swamp Notes regulars like Peter Spiegel, Lauren Fedor and Rana Foroohar for a live webinar. Register now and you can submit questions ahead of time. Now the event is just for FT subscribers and you can find more information in our show notes. Politicians are at the cutting edge of communications technology. Franklin Roosevelt had his radio. John F Kennedy’s shiny teeth gleamed on TV and Donald Trump reached millions through his Twitter feed. And in this election cycle, the leading candidates are figuring out the best ways to communicate with their voters.
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This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Marc Filippino, and this week we’re asking, how are Donald Trump and Kamala Harris getting their message out? Here with me to discuss is Peter Spiegel. He’s the FT’s US managing editor. Hey, Peter.
Peter Spiegel
Good to be back, Marc.
Marc Filippino
And we’ve also got Chris Grimes. He covers the media for us out of Los Angeles. Hey, Chris.
Chris Grimes
Hey. Thanks for having me.
Marc Filippino
Yeah, no problem. So on Thursday, vice-president Kamala Harris did her first sit down interview since Joe Biden announced that he was exiting the race for president. She spoke with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her running mate, Tim Walz. But, Peter, I want to know what took her so long, you know, to have this kind of interaction with the press.
Peter Spiegel
Well, it’s a very good question. And frankly, we in the media have been bringing it about that for some time. I mean, look, she had the momentum. She was the new candidate. Suddenly things were going well for her. She was controlling the message on her own, frankly, because she was a candidate at such a late stage. There hasn’t been a hugely well-formed policy message out there that she had to deliver. So sitting down in a tough interview, particularly with print, I would argue, never mind TV, was not the time to do it. And let’s be honest, you know, in talking about forms of communications, I you know, I was at the Democratic convention a couple weeks ago and they gave a huge number of credentials to, quote unquote, non-traditional media. And I think they think Instagram and all the other social media channels may be more useful to them than those of us in ink-stained wretches and in the traditional media.
Marc Filippino
Yeah. When you say non-traditional media, we’re talking about influencers, right? Like TikTokers? Correct?
Peter Spiegel
Yeah. I mean, that is the overarching term used for everyone in this regard, which is influencers. And we have seen a huge return to the conversation by younger voters who were really turned off by two middle-aged white guys, or actually not even two middle-aged white guys, two old . . .
Marc Filippino
Two old white guys. Yeah.
Peter Spiegel
They have been incredibly energised. The risk there, I would just say is, you know, young voters don’t vote. And even Obama 2008 I’ve talked to people who worked on that campaign, said for all the excitement among young voters, they still didn’t turn out.
Marc Filippino
I want to pick that apart a little bit, Chris. I mean, pouring so much energy into a social media strategy like the one that Harris is doing. I mean, we are now exiting brat summer and, you know, all the things associated with it. Are they spending their time and energy correctly if the message is going to fall on deaf ears or ears that won’t get out to vote?
Chris Grimes
Well, I have a one person, focus group in my house, which is a recently minted 18-year old girl.
Marc Filippino
Oh, great. Here we go.
Chris Grimes
She was completely disengaged from this. As Peter said, it was two elderly white men. But as soon as the brat meme hit, this was on her radar. She and her friends were pumped. And they’re talking about the election. And that was harnessing the power of Charlie XCX, who, Peter, do you know who that is?
Peter Spiegel
I must say, much like you, I also have a 17-year old at home. So therefore I knew who Charlie XCX was even before, that she became a huge name across the country.
Marc Filippino
So you guys got me both beat. I’m 35 and I don’t. I barely know this person (laughter). I also, I want to point out something from the Democratic National Convention that one of our producers brought up, and that is Harris and Trump, for that matter, went on very, very late. We’re going back to the modes of communication here and late for the East Coast, that is, it was ten o’clock plus for each of the candidates. And the idea was, you know, broadcast TV, there’s really no appointment television necessary any more. So you don’t really need to have it earlier to reach the most people, because most of the content is going to be consumed by social media. And it brings up this question of, you know, Harris skirting the mainstream media. Of course, there’s the Thursday interview that I’ve already talked about, but does she need the Financial Times? Does she need to talk to the FT News Briefing and Swamp Notes guys?
Chris Grimes
This goes to your original question was why she was doing this in the first place. I agree with Peter that don’t fix what’s not broken, which was she was generating lots of enthusiasm. She was new. Really, why sit down for tough interviews when you’re getting loads of free coverage? But we should remember that, you know, she was a person who had trouble with interviews. You know, she was sceptical of the press. You know, there was a New York Times magazine cover story last year where she was supposed to do two interviews. She stopped after one. There’s the Lester Holt one.
Kamala Harris audio clip
We’ve been to the border.
Lester Holt audio clip
You haven’t been to the border.
Kamala Harris audio clip
And I haven’t been to Europe. And, I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making.
Peter Spiegel
The Lester Holt one. I think it’s notorious. I mean, she really flubbed that one with NBC News and, frankly, didn’t do a big interview after that one.
Chris Grimes
So there’s a little bit of a defensive aspect of this. These people we’re talking about who are the audience for the TikTok audience and the Instagram audience, they’re not paying attention to this. And this is, you know, for our industry and we believe for democracy. This is not necessarily a good thing. But, you know, in a short run, presidential campaign, which is what she is running, I think that that’s part of the strategy.
Marc Filippino
Can we do a little journalism one-on-one here? Why are candidates getting their message out directly to voters problematic instead of going through the media?
Peter Spiegel
Well, look, I mean, there’s a couple thing. There is a sort of a it is good for democracy kind of thing, which I think is an obvious thing, right? There is answering tough questions from informed reporters is important in a democracy. And I know that that sounds self-aggrandising, but your average voter is not spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week studying the issues. I think that’s important to say. The other point I’ll make, which is a bit more inside Washington, remember the John McCain campaign, right? John McCain got great press. And why? Because he was accessible. I mean, the Straight Talk Express, people sat in the back of the bus with him for hours on end. He wouldn’t shut up. And as a result, the press would give him the benefit of the doubt. And, you know, everyone says, oh, the media’s biased or left biased or right bias. Actually I’ll give you the secret. The media is biased towards access. Flash forward to Joe Biden. Joe Biden had a very similar strategy to Kamala Harris, which is, I mean, notoriously had no sit down interviews with the New York Times, with us, with anyone. And lo and behold, when he had a bad debate, the media turned on him, I think justifiably. But maybe if he had cultivated relationships with the big traditional media, they would give him the benefit of the doubt.
Chris Grimes
It’s a funny thing that you mention because Trump is very good. He’s very skilled at using the press. He’s, you know, he used to give tips to page six of the New York Post all the time about himself and what he was up to, sometimes using an alias. He used television. And, I mean, he used to call reporters of the Financial Times to promote whatever thing he was promoting at the time. He’s very cynical about the way he uses the press, but he’s got real chops.
Marc Filippino
Right. You know, Trump seems to be just about everywhere. And in this cycle, especially he’s turning to niche right-leaning podcasts and YouTubers to help spread his message. These are outlets that maybe you haven’t heard of. But it just goes to show that the political media landscape is just so fractured and ideologically polarised. And I’m curious what you think that means for our democracy.
Peter Spiegel
Look, I guess I tend to be a little bit cynical about this and say it was always thus. We seem to think that there was an era 50 years ago where your average American was sitting around the kitchen table talking seriously about political issues of the day and watching the Lincoln-Douglas debates or something like that. I don’t remember that time ever happening. So I guess I’m going to be a little bit contrarian on this. I think I think we are in a place where the media world is being disrupted, like it was with the advent of television, the advent of radio and other technologies. But I don’t think it’s the death of serious journalism. And again, I would go back to the point that, yes, the demise of mass media where the big media brands kind of had a monopoly on their audiences, both big city newspapers and the big broadcasters. But that was almost the exception to the rule. That period, sort of maybe the postwar period for about 30 or 40 years. The rest of the time, it’s always been a sort of dispersed, disintegrated multi-source media environment. I think we’re just kind of reverting to mean in that regard.
Marc Filippino
Chris, what do you think?
Chris Grimes
I disagree with my boss on that.
Marc Filippino
(Laughter) Excellent.
Chris Grimes
This is what I worry about. It’s not, you know, necessarily the big cable news networks and the big metropolitan newspapers. It’s the decline of local news. Maybe people didn’t read the big papers. But they did, everybody got the local newspaper, and somebody for that local newspaper was covering the city council meeting, and they were covering local sports, and that it’s at the local level that I do believe that a lack of quality media and quality reporting is eroding the fabric of the democracy.
Marc Filippino
I couldn’t agree with you more. I was a general assignment reporter for a few weekly newspapers in Maine and Massachusetts, and I’m sure there are still places that are covering the city council in Biddeford, Maine. But it’s not a lot, and I don’t know how much longer they’ll get that coverage.
Marc Filippino
All right, guys, I think at this point we’re going to take a quick break. And then when we come back we are going to do Exit Poll.
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Marc Filippino
We are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that did not happen on the campaign trail and apply a rigorous political analysis to it. So last weekend, we learned that two Nasa astronauts, Butch Whitmore and Suni Williams, are stuck in space. The pair boarded the International Space Station in June for what was supposed to be an eight-day rotation. Now, thanks to a malfunction with their Boeing spacecraft, Nasa administrators don’t expect that they’ll return to Earth until February. That’s eight months instead of eight days. And get this: Trump booster Elon Musk is here to save the day. His company SpaceX is sending a ship to bring them home. So a lot to unpack there. But, how do you guys feel about this in terms of the election, especially because Elon is a huge proponent of Trump?
Peter Spiegel
Well, I thought you were gonna ask me how these guys going to vote because . . .
Marc Filippino
Oooh. How are these guys going to vote?
Peter Spiegel
Did they get their absentee ballot before they blast it up? They thought they would be back in time. I mean, I’m slightly obsessed by this story. I mean, it’s a great business story. I mean, Boeing, I mean, how they can’t even seem to get their aeroplanes right, never mind their rocket ships. I haven’t really considered the political implications of this however.
Chris Grimes
I’m gonna really stretch here. So, a couple of weeks ago, the state of California made a decision that had to do with gender identity and schools, which made Elon Musk incredibly angry. And so now he says he’s moving the SpaceX operation out of California to Texas. So we’re going to call this, what is it? It’s a victory for red state America, you know, versus the blue state liberal hellhole that is California.
Peter Spiegel
As someone who was born and raised in red state America, who is now living in blue state hellhole, I think you are the authority on this, Chris (laughter).
Marc Filippino
I want to thank our guest, Peter Spiegel. He’s the FT’s US managing editor. Thanks, Peter.
Peter Spiegel
Always a pleasure.
Marc Filippino
And Christopher Grimes, he is our Los Angeles bureau chief and he covers the media for the FT. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Grimes
Absolutely. Any time.
Marc Filippino
This is Swamp Notes, the US politics Show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Sonja Hutson. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Marc Filippino. I mentioned this on the FT News Briefing this week, but I want to give you a heads-up that I’m going to be out for the rest of the year on paternity leave. I’ll be back in 2025. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.
