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On Sunday, CNN showed off what kind of so-called “Reliable Sources” they could dredge up when chief media correspondent Brian Stelter brought on Politico founding editor John Harris to discuss election coverage. But according to Harris, the media were in the wrong for acting as though President Trump still had a chance at winning and avoiding “death watch coverage.” He and Stelter would later downplay the Biden family corruption scandal as something even the people reporting it don’t believe.
In the first panel discussion, where the chyron asked “are reporters overcorrecting in response to 2016,” Stelter lauded Harris’s critique of the media’s purported favorable coverage of Trump’s campaign:
John, you have a headline for Politico that to me this is the most interesting story I’ve read all week. It’s at Politico.com. It’s headlined: “Trump is doing worse than it seems but reporters are afraid to say so.” You and Daniel Lippman argue that by historical standards, Trump’s coverage is favorable in one key aspect. What is that key aspect?
“The fact that reporters are giving generous allowance that Trump could still win. And they’re treating this as though it’s quite a close race based on the experience of 2016,” Harris gripped. He went on to suggest that Trump’s blind-side victory had left the media “gun shy,” and that has caused them to overcorrect “too far in the other direction.”
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