honestly aside from explicitly right wing outlets, I don’t see any particular bias against harris. most outlets will almost alway criticize trump on everything while most of the time they praise harris and sometimes they criticise her on her more progression policies (because most of the media tilts fiscal conservative). it’s rather more of a perceptions of the audience thing. trump has done so many outlandish shit that now most of his bullshit gets filtered out as noise.
also i don’t wanna be mean but the question “Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?” sounds like it’s coming from an agitated"vote blue no matter who" democrat who is baffled about why would people not vote for the obviously better candidate.
there are a lot of reasons as you said “this race is STILL either 50/50 or tilt Trump”. maybe it’s because she’s black or female and there are a lot of racist and misogynists out there, maybe it’s because of the electoral college, maybe it’s because of the hold the MAGA cult has over its members, or maybe it’s because harris is refusing to stop arming and helping a genocide and that is turning people off.
the Harris campaign right now can only change one of these factors. even if you plan on voting, lie on the polls and organise and protest against the genocide because if enough people do this to force the hand of the Harris campaign then it wouldn’t be a close race at all.