Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous deserve to have been boo-ed off the stage, as they were at the end of last night’s debate in Philadelphia, by the audience which represented an American public hungry for real debate about real issues but sat through two hours of nothing but tabloid attacks. I had never seen a major national news network anchor booed off the stage on a televised event, but found this to be one of the only hopeful moments of the evening. Hosting a presidential debate is a test of character not only for the candidates, but also for the host network, and it demands a certain amount of seriousness, respect, and integrity on the part of the interviewers even when asking aggressive questions. Clinton fully participated in the antics, but repeatedly found herself evading eye-contact with the audience, her daughter, or her moderators, choosing instead when she went into mudslinging mode to be speaking to the rafters.
Shame on you ABC! If this debate represents your idea of the proper or even profit-worthy relationship between journalism and politics at a time of an unfathomably destructive war and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, not to mention all the other domestic and global issues for which the presidential candidates should be articulating a vision for the future, I would go so far as to say that ABC is an enemy of the American public.
After witnessing the embarrassing capitulation to lowest common denominator gutter politics, and the so called “objective commentary” at the end that basically served as an 30-second campaign ad for Clinton who months ago under Mark being-human-is-overrated Penn set the tone for this kind of mudslinging and tabloid tactics, I hereby boycott ABC as a source of any news in the future and declare that ABC is harboring weapons of mass distraction that pose a vital threat to the American people.
Whatever fate is in store for those moderating this goosing of America should also meet the producers of the show and David Brooks, who for the New York Times (surprise surprise) gives ABC an ‘A’ for its hardhitting questions on lapel pins, pastors, Bosnian gunfire, and 60’s radicals, and whose op-ed title “No Whining about the Media” expresses a particularly disturbing stance toward the outcries of thousands of Americans who are up in arms about the so-called shapers of public opinion and their increasing distance from the matters shaping the public sphere and those affecting the public good.
Only this now gives me hope! http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/comments?type=story&id=4666956
When first I checked, this official ABC comment roll of 14,951 comments included hundreds of posts, about 90% of which decried the shameful behavior by ABC cohosts Gibson and Stephanopolous, the producers and the network, and many of which share my resolve to boycott ABC. When last I checked, it seems that dozens of these comments had been scrubbed or were inaccessible, including my own albeit brusquely worded version of the above. I hope someone archives these comments for posterity (and for the ABC board), because I think if we’re lucky we may look back on last night’s debacle of a debate as some kind of pivotal moment in the history of the relationship between American media and American politics, when the American public decides to take back both politics and the media from the hands of propagandistic corporate distractionists and disinforming swine. If we’re unlucky, last night’s debate is yet one more nail in the coffin of American journalism and we may well mark it as the day the music died.
Posted by thinandlight 