Local Media in Pennsylvania Ho-Hum on Zelensky Ammo Plant Visit

A high-profile visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to an artillery shell production facility in the do-or-die US election battleground state of Pennsylvania was a medium-grade news item in Keystone state media. Some outlets shoved the Ukrainian leader in news feeds crammed with information about weather, crime, sports and entertainment, while others just ignored his presence in the state entirely.

According to recent polls Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, an advocate of strong US military support to Ukraine, is locked in a near dead-heat with former President Donald Trump, who supports Ukrainian concessions to Russia and reduced US involvement in European conflicts. Both parties’ leadership have deemed Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral college votes and voters almost 50/50 on the candidates, as a must-win state.

In Ukraine, Zelensky’s Monday tour of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, his first major media event during a planned five-day US trip for meetings on war-fighting policy with DC leadership, and later a speech at the UN, topped national news in his home country.

Major Ukrainian media flooded airwaves and websites with images of Zelensky shaking hands and patting shoulders with shop workers. Details about thousands more American 155mm shells possibly reaching Ukrainian battlefields dominated and usually led evening news reports during a busy Monday that saw a Russian glider bomb hit the city of Zaporizhzhia and injure civilians for the second time in 48 hours, the invasion of Russia by an elite Ukrainian assault infantry brigade widening Kyiv’s incursion in Russia’s Kursk region, and a Kremlin decision to de-crew Russia’s only aircraft carrier and convert hundreds of unlucky sailors into infantrymen.

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In Pennsylvania, on Monday, some news platforms limited coverage of Zelensky’s presence in Scranton to the Associated Press (AP) wire service story and one or two photographs. The Pittsburg Post-Gazette headlined “Ukraine’s Zelensky visits Pennsylvania ammunition plant to thank workers.”

The AP article itself laid out numbers about Scranton shell production, quoted a pair of local residents stating they support increased US ammunition support to Ukraine, but made reference neither to Trump nor the election. 

A few outlets went the extra mile. ABC affiliate Action News 6 in Philadelphia offered viewers both the AP article and a 20-second video. CBS Harrisburg affiliate Local21 News published not only the AP article on the day of the visit, but a heads-up to readers two days prior to Zelensky’s arrival.

WWIA Radio, the local PBS/NPR affiliate, deployed reporter Borys Krawczeniuk to Scranton and the factory entrance, where he interviewed Zelensky supporters, snapped photos of citizens standing with blue-yellow Ukrainian flags, and watched a massive US-Ukrainian official motorcade roll past the plant’s guarded entrance.

Probably the most thorough coverage in all Pennsylvania, Kyiv Post researchers found, was in the Times Leader, a publication delivering news to northeastern Pennsylvania, Luzerne County and specifically Scranton for more than a century. Zelensky’s visit to the munitions plant led the Times Leader’s Monday daily news roundup, and reporter/columnist Bill O’Boyle in a 590-word article quoted Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s (D) position on Ukraine in detail.

“Pennsylvania is the birthplace of American freedom – and our Commonwealth proudly stands with the people of Ukraine as they fight for their freedom against naked aggression. I’m proud to welcome President Zelensky and his delegation to Scranton – to visit with the women and men who are fueling his country’s fight for freedom,” Shapiro said. His social media feeds showed him signing a 155mm shell with a patriotic slogan.

O’Boyle went on to inform readers that a Pennsylvania National Guard unit deployed in September to Germany to help train Ukrainian soldiers, and that Shapiro’s office had just signed a cooperation agreement with Ukraine’s industrial Zaporizhzhia region to help Pennsylvania businesses assist Ukraine with rebuilding after the war. 

But some major Pennsylvania news outlets did not report the Scranton visit at all, Kyiv Post researchers found. Typical was the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, one of two major newspapers serving Pennsylvania’s biggest city, whose most recent searchable reporting on Ukraine, of any kind, was a three-week-old article on US technicians planning to help investigate the loss of a Denmark-donated F-16 fighter jet in combat in Ukraine.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania’s most widely read newspaper and one of the oldest news publications in the US, did not report the Zelensky visit either. That paper’s most recent reference to the Russo-Ukrainian War in context with US elections was printed on Sept. 20, in an opinion piece by columnist Trudy Rubin calling on the Biden/Harris administration to green light use by Kyiv of long-range American weapons against targets in Russia, and calling Trump an appeaser of dictators.

On Sept. 24 Rubin in another opinion piece praised Vice President Kamala Harris for respecting the voting weight of Pennsylvania’s 700,000-member Polish-American community.

The Keystone Newsroom, a local web-based outfit focusing on delivering weighted news and analysis to people unlikely to be willing to negotiate mainstream media paywall (“Pennsylvania News You Can Use”) in a Sept. 23 piece, mentioned neither Zelensky nor Scranton, but reported in detail on an endorsement Harris had just received from the Polish-American activist group Pennsylvania Polonia.

“Trump bowed to dictators like Putin before and he will do it again if he is reelected… The last presidential election in Pennsylvania was decided by just 80,000 votes, which is why we are calling on our friends and neighbors to cast their votes for the leaders who will maintain alliances that make our world safer, expand our freedoms here at home, and protect the American dream for us all,” the endorsement said in part.

The article points out that 800,000 Pennsylvania residents have Polish backgrounds. The Pennsylvania Polonia endorsement argues that since Pennsylvania is one of the most critical swing states, if not the most critical, in upcoming Presidential elections, Pennsylvania’s Polish-Americans can and should become Harris’ victory margin in the Keystone state.

The influential Philadelphia Inquirer on Sept. 11 seemed to see the numbers and voting groups much the same way, praising Harris for mentioning Pennsylvania’s Polish-American residents by name during debate with Trump and her telling him she thought Pennsylvanians are opposed to appeasing the Kremlin. The Inquirer called it a “shout-out on the national debate stage… (to) a group that is consistently civically engaged.” 

Political reporter Nick Field in a Sept. 23 editorial in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on voter trends in the state said that falling Democratic voter registration in central regions of the state might play to Trump’s advantage, but, the former President’s stance on Ukraine could damage his election chances even more.

“With Scranton Joe [Biden] off of the ballot, Trump has a unique opportunity to pick up votes throughout this region, especially in Lackawanna [county]. However, there remains a danger that the Trump/Vance team’s hostility to Ukraine could hurt them in the heavily Ukrainian-American rural areas out here,” Field wrote.