Debate Analysis: ABC Asked Most Scandal Questions, Obama Was Clear Target

[proud2BlibKansan]

Nico Pitney
The Huffington Post
Debate Analysis: ABC Asked Most Scandal Questions, Obama Was Clear Target
April 20, 2008 02:00 PM


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The furor over ABC's Democratic debate last week was not universally shared.

While Obama supporters (and many media critics) decried what they saw as biased, gotcha-style questioning, a vocal minority (mostly Clinton supporters) was unmoved. Where was the media outrage when Hillary was being grilled in past debates? She got it "much much tougher" than Obama did from ABC, Clinton spokesman Jay Carson charged.

This debate over debates had me curious. Was ABC's debate really in a lowly class of its own? Or were Obama backers (inside the press and out) just being overly-sensitive? So I went through each of the four one-on-one contests between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, starting with CNN's debate way back on January 31, and cataloged every question, classifying them as follows:


Policy and expertise: In this category, I put any questions about a candidate's policy preferences or legislative record, as well as questions about a candidate's experience ("Neither one of you have ever run a business, so why should either of you be elected to be CEO of the country?").


Non-policy questions: Questions focused on politics, including electability and the role of superdelegates, as well as those about campaign management, such as releasing tax records or accepting public financing.


Scandal questions: Questions about hot-button, non-policy issues like Jeremiah Wright or Clinton's Bosnia trip. (Note: this category does not include follow-up questions on these issues given to the opposing candidate; ie. Clinton being asked about Wright, or Obama being asked about Bosnia.)

This is obviously not a scientific process. I did not factor in the tone of the policy questions, which were often framed as critiques of the candidates and their views (although I found relative parity between Clinton and Obama in this respect). Moreover, for the purposes of this analysis, I'm not taking a position on whether any of the scandal questions were fair or legitimate lines of inquiry.

That said, I found the results of applying this method surprising. Here are the notable takeaways:

1) ABC's debate was in a class of its own, with more scandal and non-policy questions than any other. ABC asked the most scandal questions, and both ABC and NBC devoted only half of their questions to policy issues. The CNN debates were dramatically more policy-focused. Here's a breakdown:

more (very interesting analysis): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/20/debate-analysis-abc-asked_n_97599.html

[NJmaverick]

1. People needed an analysis to see this?

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Sounds like he is trying to prove something to the doubters