Post-debate, Biden's fitness to be president is under the microscope. But is the coverage balanced?

Caption

President Joe Biden speaks during a presidential debate with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. / AP

NPR recently posted that they've been inundated with listener feedback asking about the coverage of President Joe Biden after last month's presidential debate. 

Listeners are voicing concerns about the intensity of the reporting on the internal turmoil within the Democratic Party, as leaders debate whether Biden should remain their nominee.

Beyond just NPR, some newsrooms had raised questions about Biden’s cognitive abilities and capacity to serve another term. However, the debate marked a turning point, and what seemed to be an intensification of coverage, leading us to ask an expert if the ramping up of coverage in the media has been balanced. 

GPB's Pamela Kirkland sat down with Nicole Carr, an investigative journalist and adjunct professor at Morehouse to talk about the media coverage.  

TRANSCRIPT

Pamela Kirkland It's Morning Edition. President Biden held his first press conference as the news has been dominated with headlines about whether or not he should step aside as the Democratic nominee after his performance at the first presidential debate. Questions have come up around Biden's cognitive ability, his health and his ability to do the job for another four years. But is the media frenzy ramping up the pressure? To help break all of this down, I'm joined by Nicole Carr. Nicole is an investigative journalist and an adjunct professor of journalism at Morehouse. Thank you for being here.

Nicole Carr Thank you for having me.

Pamela Kirkland So as a member of the media and also someone who studies and teaches best media practices, how would you characterize the media coverage of President Biden's debate performance and the impact on his reelection bid?

Nicole Carr So, Pamela, I'm going to come to you with my teaching self and what I would put in front of the students if this was happening during the fall semester. And I would characterize this as a clear line between reporting on reality and what I call, you know, "shoulda, woulda, coulda, may happen" — let's try and guess what is before us. When we are centering the pundits, the opinions, the op-ed pages, all of those spaces in the coverage, and we're not centering the voter? The people who will actually decide this election and what happens next? Then we've missed the mark. And I think we've largely missed the mark in the past couple of weeks, you know, clearly from debate night, but even before that, in centering the people who will be at the ballot box and what effect that showing at the debate had on them. We missed the mark in centering that coverage on the voter.

Pamela Kirkland I was looking back through, even before the debate, there was a Pew Research Center poll from May that showed Americans had mixed views on how the news media was covering the ages of both Biden and Trump, and it was nearly equal numbers when it came to saying that there was too much coverage or too little coverage. How would you be encouraging your students to frame this story, as these young journalists are coming up and trying to figure out how to navigate a story like this?

Nicole Carr "Understand civics," going back to that whole point about starting from this point of reality. Right now we have a Biden-Harris ticket. When that changes, if it changes, so be it. Then that's where you begin your coverage. But right now, the reality is this. And I don't see how you cover this story again without your natural next step being: What if Biden were to step away or be reelected and have to, step aside or something that's happened with him? What happens in a Harris presidency? There — We have a system in place — basic civics — that should something happened to this person that the people have elected — or that is in office right now. Let's not even go past the election; like, right here and now. Then there is a No. 2. And after that there is another plan for that, who steps in. And so we need to be focused on the fact of the reality, that should this remain, that reality: This is how it works in American government. And that kind of strips you of the speculation. Now what people think about that, so be it, right? But this is actually how it would work. And so it's just leaning into our "who, what, when, where, why and how" — Those basic J-school components, the things — you can never go wrong with the basics. It's leaning in to that to guide us through the moment.

Pamela Kirkland Nicole Carr is adjunct professor of journalism at Morehouse. Thank you so much for being here.

Nicole Carr Thank you.