On a summer Sunday, Biden withdrew with a text statement. News outlets struggled for visuals

In an intensely visual news world, a seismic week of politics was transformed again in an instant on Sunday by something almost old-fashioned: a printed statement.

President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not run for a second term was dropped into his social media feed at 1:46 p.m. Eastern, followed 33 minutes later by an endorsement of his vice president, Kamala Harris. Still recovering from COVID, the president did not appear on camera. Which meant, for news outlets, scant to no visuals.

There was also virtually no warning, leading to initial concerns that the president’s X feed had been hacked. The Associated Press filed a “flash” alert at 1:54 p.m. Eastern. Television networks broke into programming between 1:50 (Fox News Channel) and 2:04 p.m. (ABC).

It was, the Associated Press wrote, “a late-season campaign thunderstrike unlike any in American history.” CBS News analyst Ashley Etienne called it “an incredible day in American history.”

Hungry for visuals, and not finding them

After a week saturated with the endlessly repeated and parsed video of former President Donald Trump being shot at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, and the carefully choreographed four-day television show of the Republican National Convention that followed it, here was a dramatic news story that lacked the visual element in almost every way.

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