Tonight’s debate means more than you think

But don’t expect news sources to actually offer all the information available about the vice presidential candidates

Every few years, editors of major news publications wring their hands publicly, and promise that they finally figured it out. 

After enabling George W. Bush’s illegal wars of aggression, they claimed to have learned from years of deferring to Pentagon lies, and pledged more independent coverage depicting America’s foreign policy. Last year, NPR’s Pien Huang noted that “Journalists played a huge role in the spread of misinformation that led to the war of Iraq,” and went on to wonder, “[H]ow do so many journalists from some of the nation’s top institutions get it so wrong?”

After enabling Trump’s election in 2016 and his subsequent war on the Constitution, they claimed to have learned how their editorial decisions effectively put him in office, and made a great show of announcing plans to do better this year.

Yet the reality suggests otherwise. Tonight’s vice presidential debate offers a disappointing case study.

The main event

The presidential candidates from the corporate political parties, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, faced off once in a televised debate about a month ago.

Predictably, Harris—a seasoned debater, prosecutor and relatively serious politician whose ideological conservatism has been largely covered up by journalists—dominated Trump. Trump responded by ducking any further debates, rendering that one appearance the only example voters will have to discern a direct contrast between the figures at the top of the respective tickets.

Precisely because those opportunities will be so rare, tonight’s vice presidential debate attains increasing importance. That’s not the only reason why, however.

The future of the Republican Party

Trump has taken over the Republican party and, in the style of a wrecking ball, more or less transformed its ideology. Yesterday’s Republicans have become today’s Democrats. Today’s Republicans are yesterday’s fascists. And journalists continue to play a crucial role enabling the shift to the right.

For better or worse, Donald Trump is old and inevitably destined—like all of us—to move beyond this life one day. Given that, the voice of J.D. Vance, as the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, has even greater significance given his influence over the future direction of the party.

That’s more or less why he was chosen as Trump’s nominee in the first place. At the time, Biden was still in the race, Trump was up in the polls, and Vance appeared to Republican operatives like a chance to reinforce critical values among the right wing base, paving a foundation for the indefinite future of fascism in America.

Like Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri (my home state, which was the epicenter of both the movement for Black lives responding to the murder of Mike Brown in 2014, as well as today’s right wing attacks on trans communities and students), Vance is one of the intellectual architects of the contemporary right wing movement.

Understanding his background, his views, his policy prescriptions, and his political vulnerabilities is critical for this November’s election. 

But most voters won’t ever have a chance to hear all of the perspectives—or even the most important ones—about Vance’s voice.

Reporters suppressing news yet again 

Voters rely on mass media to gather information about any number of things related to elections. That’s one reason why the press enjoys (an increasingly theoretical, and relatively meaningless version of) freedom guaranteed under the First Amendment.

But what happens when the press refuses to inform the public, and instead suppresses vital information that could inform voters?

That’s not a hypothetical question, but rather a description of what is happening today under our feet—not for the first time.

Independent reporter Ken Klippenstein (whose Substack column I highly recommend) posted a dossier about Vance compiled by the Trump campaign in the weeks before he was nominated as Trump’s running mate. The dossier is critical to understand for several reasons, yet it remains suppressed by major news outlets because it was obtained through sources that may have included a foreign intelligence agency.

First, the dossier reveals the Trump campaign’s view of Vance, at a time before Trump & Vance joined forces. That timing offers critical insight—not only about Vance, but also about Trump, his vanities, and the apparent ignorance of his campaign team, which omitted from the dossier any reference to Vance’s controversial views about gender that have helped drag their campaign down in the polls and turn the race into a relative tossup.

Second, it confirms the frailty of Trump’s ego. Most of the dossier relates to the extent to which Vance had humiliated him in the past, and potential tension among their viewpoints. In this context, the most significant aspect of the dossier is its documentary confirmation that the Trump-Pence campaign, and the Republican Party more broadly, have been reduced to a mere cult of personality.

Double standards and widely shared failure

It’s not as if the dossier lacks newsworthy information. And press outlets have published even less newsworthy leaks from presidential campaigns before, including emails surreptitiously obtained from Hillary Clinton’s campaign published in 2016.

Double standards aside, what this moment reveals is the unanimity among editors proudly committed to suppressing the news and impeding public transparency. It’s not simply the case that a handful of editors have declined to offer voters the information included within the dossier and insinuated by its various omissions.

The editors of every major news publication have agreed—not in favor of transparency, not in favor of accountability, and not in favor of empowering voters to make fully informed decisions, but instead, in favor of empowering themselves to remain gatekeepers of critical information, and to suppress it at a crucial time.

As much as tonight’s debate offers a rare moment of transparency and the 2024 presidential election, the most important thing about it is how journalists continue to do everything possible to keep voters in the dark.

Paid subscribers can access an additional section exploring one further reason why the Vance dossier—and the platform on which you’re reading this post—are so important.