White House Photographers Slam Kamala Harris Campaign Over ‘Unprecedented’ Media Clampdown
The text discusses the increasing tensions between the press and the campaign team of Vice President Kamala Harris. It highlights a letter from Jessica Koscielniak, president of the White House News Photographers Association, which criticizes Harris’s campaign for significantly reducing media access, specifically by limiting the number of traveling journalists on her plane from 13 to 9. This decision has been deemed unprecedented and detrimental to the visual journalists who are especially impacted by the cut.
Koscielniak urged the Harris campaign to reconsider this decision, but it appears that the campaign has not responded adequately to these concerns. This situation has been framed within a broader context of the Democratic Party’s handling of press relations, drawing parallels to President Joe Biden’s previous avoidance of tough media scrutiny. The text expresses a sense of frustration from journalists regarding this increasingly reclusive approach to media engagement by both Biden and Harris, suggesting a pattern of limitations on press access and transparency that conflicts with traditional journalistic practices. The writer contemplates the implications of such actions on real journalism and the dynamics between the media and established political figures.
For nearly four years, the establishment worked hard to shield its puppet, President Joe Biden, from public scrutiny. Now, regime operatives have taken the same approach with Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Although they have largely enjoyed cooperation from their minions in the establishment media, it now appears that some journalists who actually care about their special brand of journalism have begun to push back.
In an Aug. 28 letter obtained by Axios and posted Thursday to the social media platform X, Jessica Koscielniak, president of the White House News Photographers Association, decried “an unprecedented reduction in access to a major presidential party candidate” as a result of the vice president’s decision to freeze out the media.
The Harris campaign, according to Koscielniak, reduced the pool of traveling journalists from 13 to nine. This decision hit the visual journalists hardest.
“Every other representative of the press pool has been allowed to continue traveling without interruption,” the WHNPA president wrote, “while the four independent news photographer seats have been downgraded to one.”
With that in mind, Koscielniak effectively demanded changes aboard the vice president’s aircraft.
“The WHNPA strongly calls on the Harris campaign to reconsider the number of media seats allowed on Air Force 2,” Koscielniak wrote.
Alex Thompson, the Axios political correspondent who posted the letter to X, noted that the Harris campaign ignored Koscielniak’s plea.
“The VP’s team didn’t respond until last night after we asked about the letter,” Thompson tweeted in part.
New: In an Aug. 28 letter obtained by Axios, the WH News Photographers Association said Harris’ team was engaging in an “unprecedented reduction in access.”
The VP’s team didn’t respond until last night after we asked about the letter
W/ @sarafischer https://t.co/OOch8LDqWX pic.twitter.com/qkl5MaStBr
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 12, 2024
Then, in a corresponding report published on Thursday, Axios revealed the boilerplate-style response it received from Harris’s office, which claimed to have maintained “constant communication with the Chair of the White House Correspondents’ Association as the Office worked to explore solutions to increase press access.”
“It’s very disappointing,” Koscielniak told Axios. “This is the smallest number of media to travel for a presidential race in my memory. When Vice President Harris became the presidential nominee, it should have been negotiated by the WHCA that the full 13 member travel pool be on her plane.”
Most important of all, Axios did not neglect the larger context.
In fact, the story described the shunned photographers’ plight as “part of a larger pattern with the Democratic Party.”
Unlike former President Donald Trump, who speaks with anyone who will listen, Biden has remained largely hidden from the press.
Since July, when Democrats staged a coup against Biden and replaced him with Harris, the vice president has also remained hidden.
“So far, her approach to the press resembles Biden’s strategy of ducking tough interviews,” Axios wrote.
The key takeaway here involves journalists’ mounting frustration with the reclusive vice president.
Of course, in any dispute between the establishment media and an establishment politician, one cheers above all for prolonged conflict.
“The fratricidal war between Hitler and Stalin is daily weakening both dictators,” former President Herbert Hoover wrote in 1941.
On the other hand, photojournalists who seem to care primarily about their craft hardly qualify for comparisons to tyrants. After all, it is not as if photojournalists lie on behalf of the regime while serving as on-air hosts for MSNBC or CNN.
Thus, we happily welcome the WHNPA to the growing legion of observers who have noticed Harris’s comically shameful behavior.
We also welcome Axios to another growing legion of observers who have detected a “pattern” of that same behavior in the Democratic Party.
Now, if everyone involved will start telling the truth about who really controls the federal government and thus why establishment operatives feel empowered to hide their puppets, we can enjoy some real journalism.
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