Moments before former Vice President Joe Biden was expected to address the nation after another night of protests, a chyron appeared on MSNBC teeing up the speech.
“Soon: Biden speaks on civil unrest from Philadelpha,” the text read.
In any ordinary presidential election, that kind of wording in the lower left corner of the television would serve as an innocuous and forgettable teaser. But on Tuesday morning, the mere mention of an upcoming Biden event was notable for an entirely different reason: it almost never happens.
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As the country faces a growing backlash against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Biden has held several in-person gatherings outside of his home. On Monday, he met with black faith leaders and local officials at a predominantly black church and held a virtual roundtable with mayors, including Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms, Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, and St. Paul’s Melvin Carter.
Neither was carried on live television. And within Biden’s orbit, anger is brewing over the belief that the cable news is, once again, relegating their candidate to second-tier status as they chase the next dramatic offering from President Donald Trump. Senior adviser Ron Klain begged his followers on Twitter to tweet at MSNBC and CNN to ask them why they didn’t cover the events live. And Symone Sanders, another senior Biden adviser, called the decision “M A L P R A C T I C E.”
“It wouldn’t be so frustrating if, in the same breath, these same news stations weren’t complaining about Biden’s lack of activity,” Steve Schale, who runs the pro-Biden Super PAC Unite the County, told The Daily Beast. “Unless you’re a journalist reporting on something, you don’t get on cable news unless you say crazy things.”
On Tuesday, the three biggest cable news networks did carry Biden’s speech live, during which he offered a strong rebuke of Trump and a unifying message for a nation suffering from civil unrest. In addition, all three major evening newscasts ran packages that included portions of his statements.
But those broadcasting decisions seem unlikely to quell concerns—expressed by everyone from senior Biden campaign advisers publicly, to bundlers, and unaffiliated Democrats—about what they see as inequalities and shortcomings in the media’s current campaign coverage.
“It’s a maddening and frustrating scenario,” said Ian Sams, an alum of Sen. Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns. “If [CNN President] Jeff Zucker doesn’t turn on coverage for Joe Biden speaking in major moments at major events, there’s going to be blowback for that. You’re doing a disservice to your viewers and to the American public to not give him that visibility.”
Pointing to the coverage of Biden’s remarks on Tuesday, Sams said he’s hopeful that networks will start to put his events on the airwaves more regularly. But the angina from 2016, when Trump dominated media time during both the Republican primary and general election against Clinton, still lingers.
“They should be covering those events with the same gusto,” Jess O’Connell, a longtime Democratic operative and former CEO of the Democraitc National Committee, said about cable news executives’ responsibility to carry Biden events equally to Trump’s. “The challenge is that they are not necessarily as sexy as a scandal and the TV that Trump creates, but that is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
For news outlets and those on their airwaves, the criticism is misplaced. One of the reasons that Biden isn’t being covered as obsessively as Trump, they argue, is that Biden isn’t doing all that much and that, when he does provide content, it is often milquetoast or largely contrived campaign material—often with not much news value to it. Rather than covering Biden’s roundtable discussions, several cable news executives who spoke to The Daily Beast said they felt compelled to broadcast the weighty world events happening in real time: whether it be the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, protesters raging against racism in the criminal justice system, or cities experiencing chaotic social strife.
“A Biden campaign event just isn't as important as stories about major businesses getting boarding up, journalists getting arrested, protesters getting gassed,” one cable news executive said.
Biden’s campaign, and the former vice president himself, point to his increasingly busy schedule and note that his voice on these very topics is inherently newsy. Since mid-March, when public officials first began to caution towards staying isolated at home in the wake of COVID-19, Biden has regularly held broadcasts on the pandemic from his home basement in Wilmington, Delaware. Those events, officials and allies frequently lament, are not shown to the public on television.
Though the former vice president is still somewhat selective about cable news interviews, and regularly rebuffs interview requests by the major news and cable networks, the campaign regularly lobbies television news orgs to cover Biden’s events, either live or after-the-fact (a not uncommon practice for many political communications pros).
When they’re not pushing for more coverage of Biden, the campaign is working media organizations in other ways. Last year, The Daily Beast reported that the campaign sent a letter to the networks urging them not to book Rudy Giuliani, saying he was routinely pushing falsehoods about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine during the Obama administration. The campaign sent a similar letter to New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet criticizing the paper’s coverage of Hunter Biden, asking if the organization was “truly blind to what you got wrong in 2016.”
Biden staffers have also publicly complained about the Times’ Trump-related headlines, including the paper’s offering on Monday night, that portrayed Trump’s decision to clear out protesters from a park near the White House as him grabbing the mantle of law and order.
For some Democrats, the media’s coverage of the campaign says more about the incentive structure that Trump has put in place than some grand scheme to hamper Biden’s chances or boost their bottom lines.
“There’s always a chance that when Trump opens his mouth he will say something insane that will be newsworthy and good for chatter,” said Dan Pfeiffer, communications director in the Obama White House and a former CNN contributor. “That is not necessarily true with Biden, it’s actually usually the opposite.”
“The test will be, he’s out of his basement now, he’s doing lots of things, is he going to get coverage?” Pfeiffer added. “That is both a responsibility of the news organizations and an imperative for the Biden campaign and Democrats to ensure our message is getting out and we’re not depending just on the decision makers at CNN and MSNBC to do that.”
In the early stages of lockdown, Biden faced a series of technological hurdles to get his digital effort off the ground remotely. But in most events Biden has moderated during isolation, he’s generally remained serious in tone, occasionally reading scripted remarks. And he is set to venture out even further. On Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC announced it would be holding a virtual town hall on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is thought to be a potential running mate. But shortly after it was announced, the network sent an update stating that it would be “postponed until further notice,” citing ongoing breaking news.
“Biden could draw more coverage by polarizing the country more. He could come out with some wild statements like Trump does,” said Jay Rosen, a longtime media critic and journalism professor at New York University. “They would definitely get coverage, but is that what we want? Does that help the situation?”
