One of the most prominent subplots of last week’s Democratic National Convention was Murmuring of some journalists present that influencers, content creators and other non-traditional media personalities seemed to be calling the shots in Chicago. At the same time, more traditional reporters were sitting far away and, in some cases, had no access to the building at all. A report states that the respected journalist and author Ta’Nahesi Coates was turned away at the door on the last evening of the congress.

Accordingly a Reuters report from the DNC“Dozens of social media influencers are battling with journalists this week for access, prestige and workspace at a national convention where the Democratic Party is banking on the influencers’ viral online videos to boost Kamala Harris’s presidential hopes,” the report continues. In Chicago, 200 such influencers were accredited, compared to 15,000 representatives from traditional media.

A particular problem, as Reuters pointed out? The influencers, who do not submit to traditional standards of journalistic objectivity, are willing to be more openly pro-Harris and pro-Democratic (a Politico article calls them “The influencers who worship Kamala – and make the press angry.”)

(I know everyone assumes the press is behind Harris-Walz, but there is a growing movement of people, led by some journalists and even journalism professors, who believe that Trump poses such a unique threat that the press is not coming down nearly hard enough on him. And the influencer scene is clearly on board with this narrative. I saw a tweet from a DNC influencer claiming – entirely falsely – that the Harris campaign only started talking about Project 2025 when it appeared on TikTok. And of course, the Republican Party has its own, often toxic online influencer class.)

For film critics, this story sounds very familiar.

In recent years, the press area at previews of major films seems to have been renamed the “press and influencer” area. Influencers are encouraged to post selfies with the poster and do other things that a professional journalist wouldn’t do.