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Katrina vanden Heuvel | A Gotcha Debate ... •
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An Open Letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos
By Will Bunch
The Philadelphia Daily News
Thursday 17 April 2008
Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,
It's hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you signed
off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of Philadelphia,
a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already
called, quite accurately, "a shameful night for the U.S. media." It's
hard because - like many other Americans - I am still angry at what I just
witnesses, so angry that it's hard to even type accurately because my hands
are shaking. Look, I know that "media criticism" - especially when
it's one journalist speaking to another - tends to be a genteel, colleagial
thing, but there's no genteel way to say this.
With your performance tonight - your focus on issues that were at best trivial
wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods,
punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the
real world concerns of American voters - you disgraced my profession of journalism,
and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try
to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal
on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching
arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of
both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact
even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those
nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had
watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because
that was no way to promote democracy.
You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns
of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors
and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected
our everyday issues - trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at
the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root
causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space
- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited - to list all the things
you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to
alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan
to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything
that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies
in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of
the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of
people on the right, like immigration issues.
You asked about gun control - phrased to try for a "gotcha" in a
state where that's such a divisive issue - but not about what we really care
about, which is how to reduce crime. You pressed and pressed on those capital
gains taxes, but Senators Clinton and Obama were forced to bring up the housing
crisis on their own initiative.
Instead, you wasted more than half of the debate - a full hour - on tabloid
trivia that for the most part wasn't even that interesting, because most of
it was infertile ground that has already been covered again and again and again.
I'm not saying that Rev. Wright and Bosnia sniper fire and "bitter"
were never newsworthy - I myself wrote about all of these for the Philadelphia
Daily News or my Attytood blog, back when they were more relevant - but the
questions were stale yet clearly intended to gin up controversy (they didn't,
by the way, other than the controversy over you.) The final questions of that
section, asking Obama whether he thought Rev. Wright "loved America"
and then suggesting that Obama himself is somehow a hater of the American flag,
or worse, were flat-out repulsive.
Are you even thinking when simply echo some of the vilest talking points from
far-right talk radio? What are actually getting at - do you honestly believe
that someone with a solid track record as a lawmaker in a Heartland state which
elected him to the U.S. Senate, who is now seeking to make some positive American
history as our first black president, is somehow un-American, or unpatriotic?
Does that even make any sense? Question his policies, or question his leadership.
Because that is your job as a journalist. But don't insult our intelligence
by questioning his patriotism.
Here's a question for you, George. Is it true that yesterday you appeared on
the radio with conservative talk radio host Sean Hannity, and that you said
you were "taking notes" when he urged you to ask a question about
Obama's supposed ties to a former member of the Weather Underground - which
in fact you did. With all the fabulous resources of ABC News at your disposal,
is that an appropriate way for a supposed journalist to come up with debate
questions, by pandering to divisive radio shows?
And Charlie...could you be any more out of touch with your viewers? Most people
aren't millionaires like you, and if Pennsylvanians are losing sleep over economic
matters, it is not over whether the capital gains tax will go back up again.
I was a little shocked when you pressed and pressed on that back-burner issue
and left almost no time for high gas prices, but then I learned tonight that
you did the same thing in the last debate, that you fretted over that middle-class
family that made $200,000 a year. Charlie, the nicest way that I can put this
is that you need to get out more.
But I'm not ready to make nice. What I just watched was an outrage. As a journalist,
you appeared to confirm all of the worst qualities that cause people to hold
our profession in such low esteem, especially your obsession with cornering
the candidates with lame "trick" questions and your complete lack
of interest or concern about substance - or about the American people, or the
state of our nation. You embarassed some good people who work at ABC News -
for example, the journalists who worked hard to break this story just last week
- and you embarassed yourselves. The millions of people who watched the debate
were embarassed, too - at the state of our political discourse, and what it
has finally become, at long last.
Quickly, a word to any and all of my fellow journalists who happen to read
this open letter. This. Must . Stop. Tonight, if possible. I thought that we
had hit rock bottom in March 2003, when we failed to ask the tough questions
in the run-up to the Iraq war. But this feels even lower. We need to pick ourselves
up, right now, and start doing our job - to take a deep breath and remind ourselves
of what voters really need to know, and how we get there, that's it's not all
horserace and "gotcha." Although, to be blunt, I would also urge the
major candidates in 2012 to agree only to debates that are organized by the
League of Women Voters, with citizen moderators and questioners. Because we
have proven without a doubt in 2008 that working journalists don't deserve to
be the debate "deciders."
Charlie, I'm going to sign off this letter the way that you always sign off
the news, that "I hope you had a great day."
Because America just had a horrible night.
Go to Original
A Gotcha Debate ...
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation
Wednesday 16 April 2008
We're into the 21st debate. We've been through fifteen months of this primary
calendar or, as ABC's Charles Gibson put it in introducing what may well be
the last....we're into "round 15."
These boys love their sports metaphors.
But tonight it's not those sports metaphors that have me throwing my Subway
sandwich at the TV. It's the relentless stream of "gotcha" questions
that ABC's top news commentators pose that have me angry, frustrated and, yes,
bitter. Whether it's George Stephanopolous pushing Obama and Clinton to make
a "No New Taxes" pledge....(George-please reconnect with your inner
self: the intelligent, humane guy who did good battle with Alan Greenspan and
Bob Rubin in trying to stop them from putting profits before people)...Or Gibson
making the leap of equating electability with Obama's decision not to wear a
flag pin? (Patriotism, as Obama explained, slowly, carefully, means ensuring
that we take care of veterans who've served their country and done real patriotic
duty.) These kinds of questions foreclose room for a full, real and honest debate
about this country's future, and its politics and policies at home and abroad.
Barack Obama put it well when he spoke of how the two anchors of this evening's
debate (and so much of our elitist media & punditocracy) seem interested
mainly in "manufactured issues"- Jeremiah Wright, dodging bullets
in Tuzla, flag lapel pins and Bill Ayers- a major reason so many decent and
generous Americans tune out this media.
"Pain trickles up" is how Obama tonight described John McCain's economic
policies. That smart riff brought pain to Charles Gibson's face. In a previous
debate, Gibson, who must make a few million a year, made a class gaffe when
he estimated that professors in a small New Hampshire college made close to
$200,000. Laughter filled the hall that night. Americans of Main Street got
a glimpse into a media that has far more friends on Wall Street.
Tonight, Gibson seemed shocked when the two candidates spoke of raising taxes
on the very richest in this country. He seemed far more concerned about the
Democratic candidates' proposal to raise the capital gains tax-and what he
claimed would be the lost revenue- than the fact, as the New York Times's Steven
Greenhouse reports in his new must-read book, The Big Squeeze, that "since
1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers have risen by just
1, after inflation...[at a time when]the nation's economic pie is growing, but
corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece"
A one percent raise in almost thirty years? Still not bitter?
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