1) A Shameful Night for the U.S. Media

2) Open Letter to Gibson and Stephanapoulos

(1)

The ABC Debate: A Shameful Night for the U.S. Media

By Greg Mitchell
Huffington Post
April 16, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/the-debate-a-shameful-nig_b_97122.html

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the
media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News
hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused
mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their
network, should hang their collective heads in shame.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and
mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and
dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their
few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain
his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev.
Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag
pin -- while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia
trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim
association with a former '60s radical -- a question
that came out of right-wing talk radio and Sean Hannity
on TV, but was delivered by former Bill Clinton aide
Stephanopoulos. This approach led to a claim that
Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And
so on. The travesty continued.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on
getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing
their homes and -- you name it. Gibson only got excited
complaining that someone might raise his capital gains
tax. Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the
moderators to turn to those far more important issues.
Talking heads on other networks followed up by not
pressing that point either. The crowd booed Gibson near
the end. Why didn't every other responsible journalist
on TV?

To top it off, here is David Brooks' review at the New
York Times: "I thought the questions were excellent."
He gives ABC an "A." Of course, "A" can stand for many
things.

Greg Mitchell is author of the new book, So Wrong for
So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the
President -- Failed on Iraq. It has been hailed by Bill
Moyers, Glenn Greenwald, Arianna and others and
features a preface by Bruce Springsteen.
He is editor of Editor & Publisher. Email:
[log in to unmask]

(2)

An Open Letter to Charlie Gibson and George
Stephanapoulos

By Will Bunch The Philadelphia Daily News April 17,
2008

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/An_open_letter_to_Charlie_Gibson_and_George_Stephanapoulos.html

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.

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