Televised presidential debates over the years have seldom altered the course of history. But President Joe Biden’s debate disaster one year ago Friday had two major effects on the nation’s trajectory.
His hapless performance, of course, led to the end of his re-election campaign. The debate also decisively exposed the journalism industry’s long-running complicity in hiding the frailty and cognitive limitations of a sitting president. The establishment press is still suffering from that professional negligence.
The calamitous Biden debate brought an abrupt end to the media’s smokescreen regarding Biden’s capabilities. Throughout Biden’s presidency, the press failed to accurately characterize his mental and physical condition.
As president, Biden had seldom engaged the press in serious interviews — or, heaven forbid, real press conferences in which he took impromptu questions. Instead, the rare Biden press availabilities were highly orchestrated with a prefab list of friendly reporters to "call on." Biden declined the traditional, softball Super Bowl interview. His calendar featured early lids and ample vacation days. The White House Easter Bunny even had to manage Biden’s movements at a public gathering.
The media ignored these realities and shamelessly echoed White House talking points about how vigorous and mentally sharp the president was, relegating any conflicting evidence to “cheap fakes,” as instructed by Biden’s handlers. Indeed, the press colluded in hiding Biden’s limitations, even though most Americans could plainly see a faltering president. This was a conscious press omission that diminished the country’s ability to understand and react to the leadership void of the chief executive.
The fateful Trump-Biden debate of June 27, 2024 brought plain sight into magnification. Debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN made a last-ditch effort to prop up Biden by raising questions that seemed to be in his wheelhouse — about abortion, January 6, the climate crisis, and threats to democracy. But Biden couldn’t capitalize on the home-field advantage, and his ineptitude was on full display.
Recognizing that Biden’s re-election chances were toast, the establishment media turned on a dime. Suddenly, journalists began the drumbeat to push Biden out of the presidential race because, of all things, he was suddenly too old and incapable. It was quite the turnaround from earlier templates for their reporting.
The media then promptly jumped on the Kamala Harris's presidential campaign bandwagon with as little scrutiny as they had applied to Biden. Harris was portrayed as all the things Biden was not — young, trendy, diverse, energetic and even a pop culture “brat,” whatever that was supposed to mean. For an activist media, it didn’t matter that Harris was basically given a coronation rather than a nomination, had played a minimal role in the Biden White House, and was consciously avoiding interaction with the press.
No other televised presidential debate in American history has ever been so pivotal. Much has been made of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960, but Nixon still managed to hold his own in three subsequent debates and took the election to the wire. Nixon also rebuilt his political career and became president eight years later.
Gerald Ford’s clumsy debate discussion about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe put a damper on his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter. But his campaign also took the race to the finish line, losing by paper-thin margins in Ohio and Wisconsin, which could have given him the electoral victory. His loss was more heavily influenced by the post-Watergate fallout than any misstep in a debate.
The news industry’s activist performance during the Biden era, from the 2020 campaign through his time in the White House up through the debate fallout, should count as one the most shameful examples of journalistic dereliction in American history. This sorry episode demonstrated that the journalism industry was more interested in activism than in reporting reality to a citizenry.
This cynical, activist effort to herd public sentiment ultimately failed. News consumers figured out they were being worked, as a Rasmussen Reports study indicates. Many have since stopped relying on traditional media thanks to the resultant loss of trust. This is known as shooting oneself in the foot.
Reporters, producers and editors ignored long-standing standards of professionalism, as outlined in ethics codes of the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. The media’s failure drove concerned citizens to get their information from podcasters, social media, influencers, kooks, and random guys on the street. The public rhetorical sphere has been weakened. It could be a long time until Americans will again trust the traditional media to provide a sensible and balanced news agenda.
Jeffrey McCall is a professor of communication at DePauw University.
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