Andrew Blum
Andrew Blum

Vice President Kamala Harris is a great presidential candidate in 2024 for the Democrats. She not only checks a lot of boxes that President Biden didn’t but she also does a lot of things really well, including running against Donald Trump – no easy task.

However, there is a growing feeling and opinion in news media circles and on social media that she has not done enough one on one media interviews and that she is not good at these interviews, especially TV.

According to a recent New York Times article, her biggest weakness is doing TV interviews.
This criticism of her TV interviews was reported in a piece headlined “Harris Has a Lot of Strengths. Giving Interviews Isn’t One of Them” by Rebecca Davis O’Brien of the Times.

Some of the other recent headlines about the Harris media interview problem have included:

The Washington Post: The Media Gets Nothing from Kamala Harris
The Nevada Independent: So About That Interview
New York Post: Kamala Harris Hit for Being Vague, Dodging Questions
Axios: The Harris-Walz Media Strategy: Hide from the Press

In a way she is getting a bad rap. After Harris did a recent interview with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC, Fox News reported that the interview was filled with softball questions. Ruhle disagreed, and I am sure Harris felt the same way. For Harris, it seems there are not a lot of softball questions as she appears uneasy.

This is kind of perplexing. She is not new to the political arena and to media. She was elected statewide in California twice as Attorney General and U.S. Senator, and she ran for president in the 2020 primaries. She had to deal with the media in those campaigns.

But it seems that for whatever reason as good a public speaker, politician and former lawyer that Harris is, she seems afraid of the media, or at least there is the perception that she is. Perception counts a lot in politics and in PR.

I had a client a number of years ago who compared talking to the press as being as much fun as going to the dentist. Another client told me not to return press calls on controversial issues. What did I do with clients like that? I gave them media training and PR 101 lessons until they got it.

The feelings these clients expressed to me just don’t work in PR and media, especially during an election campaign against Trump. These feelings won’t work for Harris.

This election is going to be really, really, close, and then some. Harris needs to use every tool she has, including dealing with the media. Trump isn’t afraid of the media; he just goes out to the media and says whatever he thinks -- no matter if any of it is true or within norms. He doesn’t care and he thinks any PR is good PR. He is wrong about that last part, by the way.

I am not suggesting that Harris should be like Trump; the fact that she is the opposite of Trump is helping her. But she needs to be smarter about PR.

And she needs to deal with the media more and do it a lot better – end of statement.

So how does the Harris-Walz campaign do this with a little more than a month left before Election Day?

First, media train Harris in multiple sessions just like she was likely prepped for the debate with Trump. Have staffers play act as reporters and go through sample interviews, over and over until she nails it.

Even if she has been media trained before, do it again. The election may depend on how well Harris does with the media – especially in the swing states. She needs to go out and engage the media often and successfully to help get her message out to the voters.

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Andrew Blum is a PR consultant and media trainer and principal of AJB Communications. He directed PR for former New York Governor Pataki from 2007 to 2013, and directed crisis PR in the criminal cases of former U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards and DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He also has directed PR for several books about the 2020 and 2024 elections. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @ajbcomms