Don’t blame just the media for thin coverage; blame Harris’s zero-substance campaign

If you think the news coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is frustratingly paper-thin, you’re not alone.

We know little about her current policy positions or what she’d pursue as president. But let’s not be too hard on the journalists. The lack of robust news coverage is mostly down to the Harris campaign being a hollow shell, constructed entirely from feelings and emotions. It’s “good vibes” all the way through. It’s hard for the media to cover something that isn’t there.

Harris has yet to sit for an interview with any journalist. Her handlers are extra careful to ensure she makes no off-the-cuff remarks to members of the press. Harris has unveiled no detailed policy positions, provided very few agenda specifics and lacks even a policy section on her campaign website. 

The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang said it best when he complained that there’s “an energized, good feeling about Campaign Kamala — to a degree not felt, on a presidential level, since Barack Obama’s last race — and nobody wants to mess that up with debates about policy.”

The Harris campaign is fully hunkered down, seemingly with no plans to make the candidate widely available to the press or the public outside of tightly scripted and coordinated campaign events. They plan to coast to Election Day entirely on the fumes of “joy” and vague but positive press.

The lack of policy specifics, or even a clearly defined political vision, has left news outlets such as Politico to scrounge for stories. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many zero-substance fluff reports with headlines such as, “Mindy Kaling is proud to be Kamala Harris’s cooking partner,” and “In Tim Walz, Black women see the ‘right white man’ for VP.”

A campaign with nothing to say is partially why the New York Times is publishing articles with headlines such as, “A Comedy Critic Weighs In on Kamala Harris’s Laugh,” whose subhead reads, “The Trump campaign sees Harris’s laugh as a vulnerability to exploit. But far from a liability, it is one of her most effective weapons.”

Harris’s substance-free campaign is why the Atlantic likewise published an article titled “Kamala Harris and the Threat of a Woman’s Laugh.” The subhead reads, “Criticism of emotional expression has long been a weapon of choice for those wanting to cut down women in political power.”

Or, my personal favorite, which comes from the Lost Angeles Times: “Kamala Harris is a cook — and a good one. Will it help her win?” The subhead on that is even better, “Vice President Kamala Harris is a gourmand — one who knows how to brine a turkey, and where to find good Oaxacan food in L.A. She’s made it part of her political persona.” 

It seems unlikely that Vice President Harris’s knowledge of Oaxacan food will help her in crucial Waukesha County. But when there’s nothing to report, this is what you end up with.

To be sure, we would undoubtedly see similarly flattering coverage for any other Democratic candidate. Yet, in this exact instance, with the Harris 2024 campaign, there really is nothing for reporters to cover but “good feelings” and fluff. The coverage is terrible, and we’re drowning in endless “joy” nonsense, but that’s not entirely on the press. An evident lack of substance is why, in defense of the Democratic nominee, certain journalists and commentators have taken to speculating about the policies Harris may or may not pursue as president.

They can’t outright defend her vision because they just don’t know what she really believes. When the Democrat runs a “vibes only” campaign, speculation is all you have left.

“Sometimes you just have to ignore the economists,” read the headline to an Atlantic article imagining what Harris might mean when she says she wants to impose price-controls to combat persistently high grocery prices.

Axios argued the same, using identically speculative language in an article titled, “Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work.”

At least one can say of Republican nominee Donald Trump that he’s an immigration hawk. One can say he’s anti-China. But what can anyone say about Harris’s policy positions that her spokesperson won’t later deny?

If the coverage of the Democratic campaign is exceptionally thin, it’s because the campaign itself is exceptionally thin. If the Harris campaign were a sitcom, it’d be “Seinfeld” — not because it’s a show about backstabbing sociopaths, but because it’s a show about nothing.

Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.