Republican Representative Andy Harris is defending his threat to have a student journalist arrested following a disastrous debate earlier this week.
Baltimore TV station Fox 45 asked the Maryland congressman about how he flipped out at Capital News Service reporter Cat Murphy, a student at the University of Maryland, for filming him answering questions from reporters, even though other reporters were filming him too. Harris doubled down on the way he treated Murphy.
“Look the bottom line is, it’s not very newsworthy that the liberal media badgers a conservative politician. What was newsworthy is that I actually pushed back against it,” Harris said to Fox’s Mikenzie Frost. “She actually started by criticizing the way that press gaggle was being conducted. That’s not the role of a journalist, and what I did in the end is just say, ‘Look, this is all done’ and just left.”
Frost pointed out that Harris left out some details about threatening to have Murphy arrested over a false interpretation of Maryland’s two-party consent law on recordings.
“Oh, there is clearly a need for two-party consent, but it would have applied to everyone. That’s why, in the end, I just left everyone and their cameras and left the room,” Harris replied. When Frost asked if Harris thought he owed Murphy an apology, he said if she called him, he’d tell her that her failure to ask for his permission was what bothered him.
“She criticized the way I was conducting the news conference. She’s a journalism student, I think she should realize that’s not really your purpose, that’s not your purpose to attempt to run a press conference,” Harris said, adding that “she was telling me how to do my job” and continuing to blame the liberal media for “badgering a conservative politician.”
It’s pretty clear that Harris, who has been in office since 2011, is out of touch with his constituents and his state’s own recording laws. The press gaggle around him was a public event with multiple journalists recording it, which means the two-party consent law doesn’t apply. Threatening to have any journalist arrested, let alone a college student, is a sign that he doesn’t respect the right to a free press and can’t handle any pushback. It’s obvious why Harris hasn’t held an in-person town hall since 2023.