The Kamala interview was a missed opportunity

CNN was the lucky winner of the first sit-down media interview with Vice President Kamala Harris since she was pushed to the top of the ticket nearly 40 days ago and, well, it didn’t go great. 

It was not a particularly long interview. Dana Bash confirmed nothing was cut, but we still got only about 16 minutes of speaking time from Kamala. This was made more obvious by CNN’s decision to stretch the interview like pizza dough to fit an hour broadcast. They opened with a nearly five minute teaser video that came across like an ad for the Harris campaign, with Bash calling the interview a ‘watershed moment’ in the election. Throughout the hour they took several commercial breaks, teased unaired portions of the interview, and aired other prepackaged videos. CNN should have demanded more time from Kamala and when they didn’t get it, they should have aired the interview in its entirety at one time so viewers could easily recognise how strict the campaign was about access to the candidate.