Tim Walz – Media Nation

A predictably uneventful interview; plus, media links and observations for your weekend

Dana Bash interviews Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

Labor Day weekend is upon us, and we’re getting away for a few days. Before we do, though, here are a few links and observations.

• In Thursday night’s CNN interview, Dana Bash’s questions were predictable, Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Gov. Tim Walz’s answers were fine, and that was that. I don’t know why anyone thought two experienced politicians were going to have any trouble in such a setting. Here’s a theory I haven’t heard from anyone else: Donald Trump invariably runs off the rails, and President Biden has an increasingly difficult time expressing himself. We’d forgotten what these things normally look like.

• A New Hampshire man named Taylor Cockerline has been sentenced to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised probation for his role in harassing and intimidating New Hampshire Public Radio journalist Lauren Chooljian, her parents and her editor, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston. Co-defendants Eric Labarage and Michael Waselchuck have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, while a fourth defendant, Keenan Saniatan (identified only as “Saniatan” in the news release), will reportedly plead guilty on Sept. 5. Earlier, more in-depth coverage of this bizarre case is here.

• In other New Hampshire media news, The News and Sentinel, a weekly paper in Colebrook, is shutting down after the Harrigan family, which owns the 154-year-old paper, was unable to find a buyer. The InDepthNH story on the closure contains a lot of fascinating details about the paper, especially a 1997 incident when a gunman killed four people, including the editor. The late publisher, John Harrigan, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the shooting. The News and Sentinel’s slogan, by the way, should be a model for other news outlets: “Independent but Not Neutral.”

• Barnes & Noble is opening 58 new stores in 2024, and media newsletter writer Bo Sacks says that’s good news for the ailing magazine business: “B&N has a terrific well curated newsstand for magazines. 54 [sic] new newsstands may not sound like much, but it will be a big national help in magazine sales.” By the way, Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio died earlier this week at 83.

• Veteran tech writer Mathew Ingram is leaving the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review, where he’s been working since 2017 after earlier stints at the late, lamented Gigaom and, before that, The Globe and Mail of Toronto. Ingram is a calm, sometimes contrarian voice at moments when everyone else’s hair is on fire, and he is well worth paying attention to. No word on what’s next, though he says he’ll continue to write for CJR from time to time. Best wishes to him.

Bonfire of the fact-checkers; plus, Dems embrace the night, and Walz’s heartland appeal

The media fact-checkers have not distinguished themselves this week, torturing the language to find fault with statements by Democrats that, in some cases, are actually true.

Now, I’m going to confess that I was not following the fact-checkers during the Republican National Convention. But what I have found going back a number of years — as I wrote for HuffPost way back in 2011 — is that organizations like PolitiFact often twist themselves into knots to find negative observations to make about Democrats so they can achieve some sort of balance with Republicans, who were often untethered from the truth even before the rise of Donald Trump.

Fact-checkers for The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come under fire during this week’s Democratic National Convention. But I want to focus on PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, which has produced some fact-checks that make you scratch your head. I’ve been following PolitiFact on Threads. Here are a few examples:

• On Tuesday, PolitiFact gave President Biden a “false” on its Truth-O-Meter for claiming that billionaires pay an average tax rate of 8.2%. The post linked back to a PolitFact story from last January that said:

The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.

Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.

In other words, Biden was correct under PolitiFact’s own analysis.

• On Wednesday, PolitiFact slapped J.B. Pritzker on the wrist: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Trump told ‘us to inject bleach’ during the pandemic. That’s Mostly False. Trump’s 2020 comments about treatments were criticized, but he didn’t tell people to inject or ‘take a shot’ of anything.”

Pritzker’s statement was labeled as “mostly false.” Yet here’s a BBC report from 2020 that quotes Trump’s exact words: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Pritzker was right on the facts, the nuance and the context. Full stop.

• Two more from Biden: PolitiFact said the president’s assertions that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security were “mostly false” because — God help us — “When he was president, Trump released annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare but he has repeatedly pledged throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the program” and “Trump has said in the past that he’s open to cutting Social Security, but this isn’t his current position.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just embarrassing.

The late show

A number of observers, me included, have been puzzled by the DNC’s schedule, which has resulted in the main speaker of the night taking the podium after 11 p.m. The swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and most of Michigan are all in the Eastern time zone, and presumably you don’t want soft supporters and undecided voters to go to bed before hearing from the Obamas, Tim Walz and, tonight, Kamala Harris.

But it may not have made much difference. According to Craig Harrington of the liberal organization Media Matters for America, the audience for President Biden fell off only 2%. “Not ideal, but not disastrous either,” he wrote on Twitter/X.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one is going to invest a couple of hours tonight and then tune out just before Harris comes on. Still, it strikes me that it would have been a good idea to wrap up each night’s proceedings before viewers decide they’ve had enough.

Walz from the heart

Tim Walz’s short, punchy address and Oprah Winfrey’s speech were pitch-perfect.

Those who thought that Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate may have changed their minds Wednesday night, as Shapiro delivered a perfectly serviceable but rather generic address. Walz, by contrast, was folksy and empathetic, speaking to the heartland in a way that the Democrats haven’t done in many years. You had to love his former football players taking the stage, too.

What can I say about Bill Clinton? It was interesting to see that some women I follow on Threads were tuning out. Given his history, I couldn’t believe that he glommed onto the dick joke President Obama indulged in — funny coming from Obama, creepy from Clinton.

Clinton also spoke way too long and just sort of rambled. I know that some viewers loved it, and I’ve heard from a few. I also understand that a former president can’t be denied his place at the podium. But I was glad when it was over.

Michelle Obama’s rhetoric soared while the former president focused on the mission

Barack and Michelle Obama in 2008. Photo (cc) by Luke Vargas.

Twenty years ago, when the Democratic National Convention gathered in Boston, a young senator named Barack Obama delivered the speech that launched him to the presidency.

I was covering the convention for The Boston Phoenix, but I wasn’t in the hall. No regrets — I reported from four national conventions, and I thought the best way I could serve our audience was to spend as little time in the building as possible, focusing instead on alternative events, protests, what the media were up to and the like. Still, that was a big one to miss.

I didn’t miss Barack Obama’s speech last night, nor Michelle Obama’s, even if it was from the comfort of our TV room. Wow. Observers are trying to decide who delivered the better of what were two magnificent addresses. I thought hers was a superior piece of pure oratory but that his did more to advance the cause of getting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz elected. The two addresses complemented each other perfectly.

And soaring though their rhetoric was, it was pretty amusing to see the former president go there for what I believe was the first time since Marco Rubio made some awkward remarks about the size of Donald Trump’s, uh, hands.

Doug Emhoff’s speech was folksy and effective. All in all, it was another strong night for the Democrats.

Biden coverage underscores the decline of print; plus, a couple of DNC media tidbits

Early print deadlines meant that three of our national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, have no coverage of President Biden’s keynote address. All of them, needless to say, go big with Biden’s speech online. It makes you wonder who’s still bothering with the legacy press’ shrinking print editions.

A fourth national paper, the business-focused Wall Street Journal, did manage to get Biden’s speech on page one, though it’s not the lead. Locally, The Boston Globe leads with the president as well. I have to assume that’s a late edition.

Biden was supposed to go on at about 10:30 p.m., but the Democrats veered off schedule and he didn’t start for another hour. They’d better fix that — the last thing the party wants is for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s acceptance speech on Wednesday and Vice President Kamala Harris’ on Thursday to get pushed out of prime time.

Stop talking at me

God bless C-SPAN. We tuned in around 9 p.m. and chose PBS, figuring the “NewsHour” crew would strike a good balance between carrying the speeches and offering a little bit of commentary and analysis. We were wrong. We missed Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s speech entirely. And when we finally switched over, we discovered that PBS had cut away from Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a major figure in the party.

At least PBS carried New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose fiery populism was probably the highlight of the evening, though Hillary Clinton’s address conjured up all sorts of emotions. Yes, it should have been her.

I’m not going to try to assess Biden’s speech except to agree with other observers that I respect his successful presidency and am grateful that his deep sense of patriotism led him to step aside, even though it was evident that he’s still angry he was forced to make that move.

New Haven crew hits Chicago

Normally I like to see local news organizations stay mission-focused when big national events occur. But I’ll cut the New Haven Independent some slack. After all, founder Paul Bass is no longer the editor, and he’s as knowledgeable about politics as anyone I know.

Bass and staff reporter Nora Grace-Flood are in Chicago while Babz Rawls Ivy, the morning host at the Independent-affiliated radio station, WNHH-LP, is back in New Haven offering some commentary. Oakland-based cartoonist Fred Noland of the Independent Review Crew is in Chicago as well, though he hasn’t started drawing yet.

And it’s not all national. Here’s a funny story, with video and photos, about Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar squaring off with New Haven Democrats about the virtues of New Haven apizza versus Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.