Media Manipulation of Harris-Johnson interviews- Nothing New

The media manipulation of interviews with both “Aunt Kamy” Harris and Speaker Mike Johnson have gotten some decent national exposure. Of course, this is media malpractice and outright Leftist propaganda. However, this is really nothing new.

Because for those of us who have worked politics at the local level, we have seen this for over 40 years. But now… it’s getting national attention, and it’s about time.

While working campaigns in New England, I got to see this type of manipulation in spades. At one candidate forum, with candidates for governor down to state representative, a reporter for the Nashua Telegraph (we nicknamed her “Christine Farleft, playing off her name) strode right up to the platform and tried to embarrass my candidate, even as another was speaking. She then tried to manipulate answers to her questions during interviews, and it got so bad that on election night, when she showed up at my candidate’s home to try to get another interview, we kicked her off the property. The next day, my candidate nicely spoke to one of the Telegraph editors, saying we would be happy to talk to their reporters… save for “Farleft.” We were surprised but pleased when we learned she was fired.

In another incident, an opponent of one of my candidates sent out a mail piece trying to make my candidate look like a big government, tax and spend RINO. However, the opponent had misread the voting record, inverting the roll call votes (you just can’t make this type of stupidity up). So, we sent out a mailer to set the record straight, and then went to talk to a local newspaper. I’m usually very fastidious about accuracy in dealing with voting records and issues, but because of the need to push our response out rapidly, I made an error of one date. Everything else on our mailer was accurate to the letter, but there was that one wrong date. When we spoke to a reporter at the paper, all he kept talking about was my one error, and never once address the completely inaccurate mail piece our opposition put out. Fortunately, we pounded the guy on election night.

During another race, we had just finished a candidate debate the night before, and my candidate and I were reading with astonishment the morning newspaper. I looked at him and said, “you were there last night… and I was there last night. Yet half of this stuff in this column never even happened.” The reporter, who left early, made up most of what was in his column. I soon learned that this was quite common.

When I was trained to do political work, I was advised to “never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel”… i.e. a big newspaper. However, one can selectively take on these Leftist clowns and isolate selected people in the media and shame them into submission… or even get them fired. You simply tell editors you would be happy to do interviews with somebody who won’t manipulate the information, but that you won’t meet with their bad apple.

Media folks will get the message, and if enough do this the bad apple will fall to the ground and rot. And these are moments that can make you truly smile.

Russ Rodgers has several books published on Amazon.

If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.

Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA