Why Is Local Media Running Cover for Janelle Stelson in PA-10?
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
Janelle Stelson spent years on central Pennsylvania’s TV screens, telling viewers the news with a straight face. Now she’s asking them to trust her with their vote while telling Democrats in Washington a completely different story. **Local media seems fine with the double act.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Democrat Janelle Stelson is running for Congress in Pennsylvania's 10th District. Like most Democrats, she's telling voters one thing while telling her fellow Democrats in D.C. another thing. One of those issues is illegal immigration.
On October 8, 2024, Stelson told local media , "We also need to send people who cross illegally or are here illegally. We need to send them home." Less than a month later, Stelson told D.C. Democrats that she wanted illegal aliens to be "assimilated into our communities and neighborhoods" to "get them... working, sending money back home, which is what many of them dream of doing." A few weeks ago, the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) dropped an ad highlighting Stelson's views on illegal immigration, including allowing taxpayer benefits to pay for illegal aliens while supporting a plan to close rural hospitals in Pennsylvania.
Ian Thompson, a story desk editor at Fox 43/WPMT, the Harrisburg/Lebanon/Lancaster/York Fox affiliate, reached out to CLF to ask them for their source on the information in their Stelson ad. The source was Thompson's own station, particularly this interview with Stelson , where Stelson says around the 11 minute mark that she supports a " pathway to citizenship for dreamers ," among other things.
CLF says it provided the answer to Thompson, but he kept pestering them. It turns out Thompson is a left-wing partisan who hates President Trump and has written extensively about his political views, as recently as 2024.
In a 2024 opinion piece for The Slate, the student newspaper for Shippensburg University, Thompson wrote: I have made my views on Trump expressly clear — he is a wannabe-fascist who does not care for the rule of law, political institutions, or anybody but himself.
He is a power-hungry aspiring tyrant. Thompson and The Slate later endorsed Kamala Harris for president, and he wrote a defense of that piece, which is very telling: As journalists, we have a duty to speak the truth.
The truth is Trump is a danger to the country he wants to run, in his own words, as a dictator. The truth is that Trump is unfit to be president, and we have a duty to make that fact known. And Thompson also criticized the tens of millions of Americans who are Trump voters: I feel sorry for these people.
I don't know what it is — cognitive dissonance, sunk cost fallacy, obstinance. In the face of tangible, material harm to their livelihoods and security, it is depressing that so many Americans still cling to such blind loyalty and faith to a man who has demonstrated in every possible way that he has always been a con man.
Therefore, it's no surprise that Ian Thompson covered for Stelson in a recent fact check about CLF's ads. But as we noted, the source for some of the CLF's ads is Thompson's own station. Stelson herself was a journalist, and Thompson — who has made no secret of his anti-Trump views — is covering for her. "Janelle Stelson is a far-left progressive who masqueraded as a reporter for years," said CLF spokeswoman Lydia Hall. "Now that she can’t spin the news herself, her liberal reporter friends are covering for her.
It’s deceitful and wrong. Here’s the real story: Stelson is a far-left radical who will make Pennsylvania even less affordable with socialist programs and benefits for illegals." Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda.
Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress. Help Townhall continue to report on the Democrats’ radicalism and inform voters as our nation faces a crossroads.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Janelle Stelson spent years on central Pennsylvania’s TV screens, telling viewers the news with a straight face. Now she’s asking them to trust her with their vote while telling Democrats in Washington a completely different story. Local media seems fine with the double act. That’s the part that should bother anyone who thinks coverage of elections is supposed to be about something other than making the Democrat look reasonable.
The specifics are pretty easy to follow. Stelson is campaigning in PA-10 as a moderate, the kind of Democrat who “listens” and “works across the aisle.” Meanwhile, she’s taking money and lining up behind the same national Democratic playbook that the district’s voters have rejected. But instead of pressing her on the gap between the pitch and the record, the local press corps treats her like a curiosity. They run her talking points and call it reporting. They ask about her biography, not her vote with Nancy Pelosi the second she gets to Washington.
Conservatives in the district aren’t fooled, and they aren’t the ones who need convincing. The problem is the voters who rely on local news to tell them what’s really going on. When the media decides to play shield for a candidate, it’s not just lazy journalism. It’s an active choice to distort the race. Stelson wants to be judged as a local figure with common sense. The record says she’s another Democrat with a script. Someone in local media ought to ask which one is actually running.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.