Will Bunch on last night's ABC Debate- An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos

[ralps]

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

An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos

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 witnessed, 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, collegial 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.

snip

:hi: :loveya: :hug: :pals: :woohoo:

[Cleita]

1. Great commentary.

I didn't watch the debate myself because I knew it would be whoreific. I hope that this will change how debates are conducted in the future and I don't think corporate news whores and propagandists are the right people to do it.

[0007]

2. bttft and recommend with many kudos for a great post.

[ralps]

3. Thanks you all for the recommendations!

:hi: :loveya: :hug: :pals: :woohoo:

[scarletwoman]

4. Your link didn't work for me, so I'm going to try re-formatting it...

I found the entry you were referring to, but I couldn't get there by the link in your post.

An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos

on edit: Yup, my link works.

k&r
sw

[ralps]

5. That's weird WTF? Thanks for the link

:hi: :loveya: :hug: :pals: :woohoo: :shrug:

[scarletwoman]

7. I've noticed over the years that some URLs are just too long to work on DU without reformatting.

That's why I learned how to do text links by clicking on the
"HTML lookup table" link that shows up above the
message window every time you compose a post.

It's really very easy.  Type: [link:|]  After the
":" paste the URL you want to link to, stripping off
the "http://" and leaving the "www." as
the first part of the URL.

After the "|" -- (the "|" key is top half
of the "\" key which is directly under your
"Backspace" key) -- type in whatever you want as a
name for your link.

For example, the text link to the DU Home Page would look like
this: [link:www.democraticunderground.com/|Democratic
Underground]

I hope this is useful information.

sw

[Berry Cool]

6. K&R, thanks for the pointer!

[tom_paine]

8. K & R