Charlie Gibson loses the debate

According to the audience response and a viewer survey conducted afterwards, it was clear that ABC News lost the Presidential candidate debate in Philadelphia last night. The pivotal moment that most pundits declared was the turning point was the question presented to one of the ~~contestants~~ candidates about not wearing a lapel pin. But viewers also felt that the questions about a Reverend, Bosnia and a vow to “never raise taxes” were also very poorly worded and contributed to the network’s loss.

Since this means there were actually two ~~contestants~~ candidates that won last night, the question becomes what does a network news organization losing a Presidential debate mean for the candidates? Do the voters just go “Eeny meenie miney mow” in order to decide who to vote for since nothing substantive is being discussed or provided to them by the network news in order to make an informed voting decision?

All of us were the real losers last night.

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The American television network ABC was accused of bias and triviality yesterday after the latest debate between the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Viewers and media commentators complained that the debate encouraged the pair to make political attacks rather than explore policies.

The network was criticised for a perceived slant against Obama, the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, having worked as an aide to Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband and the former US president.

By mid-morning yesterday there were more than 12,300 comments on the ABC News website, most of them against the programme. The network was lambasted for the focus - during most of the first half of the programme - of Stephanopoulos and the debate’s co-moderator, Charlie Gibson, on Obama’s recent slips and his association with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

In the show, after brief opening statements and a question about potential vice-presidential running mates, Gibson looked at the comments Obama had made during a fundraising event in San Franscico this month.

The democrat had described denizens of economically depressed small towns as “bitter” voters who clung “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations”.

Clinton had spent the past several few days attacking Obama over these remarks and seeking to portray him as elitist and out of touch. In raising the remarks Gibson was seen as creating an opening for Clinton once again to attack the Illinois senator, and she obliged.

Gibson then examined Obama’s relationship with Wright, whose remarks on race relations in the US have been seen by many as anti-American.

However, Obama has already distanced himself from the Chicago preacher, largely defusing the matter with a well-received speech in Philadelphia last month.

“For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour … show Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news,” wrote the Washington Post television critic Tom Shales.

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

[reply to this]

1. Above written by bushtool on April 18th, 2008 at 1:36 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).