Exactly how many people were unable to watch the debate? Without know that, don’t you think it’s a bit odd to be outraged?
I’m with the “private is as private does” party. The problem with a “national” debate is – who do we trust to run the thing?
In this debate, the top ten were invited. Why only ten? If this were a national debate, held by the U.S. Debate Commission, the guys who were left out would have a very strong basis for a lawsuit. But as it is only a private affair, as much for entertainment as anything else, those who are left out don’t have a case at all. Too bad for them, but that’s how it goes. I don’t invite everyone I know to my house for Thanksgiving, either.
Also: if it were an official public function…how would we determine who gets to ask the questions? What questions would be legitimate? What if favoritism were accused? How could it ever be arranged to everyone’s satisfaction?
At least when Fox News runs it, we all know it’s going to be an absurdly biased mound of diseased goat droppings.
Really? I don’t “know” that.
Is it your contention that this debate can reasonably be characterized thusly, or did you just want to get in a gratuitous dig against an easy target on this MB?
There must be some experiment we can perform that will give us a precise index of the ratio with Fox News, exactly how much unbiased candor compared to diseased goat droppings. Me, I’d guess approximately a 90% DGD ratio.
Except that a “debate” (really a mass interview) 15 months before the election with seventeen announced contenders would not have been nationally broadcast to a universal audience in the Good Old Days. There would have been, at best, a rolling series of state/regional debates run on one of the regular channels. Which may actually be a BETTER scheme for reaching more people, mind you.
Part of the problem NOW is that the rise of a unified national media market with a 24 hour news cycle has created the expectation about any event, that if it was not broadcast live nationwide as it happened to every household, it might as well not happen. The extreme extrapolation would be that any “important political event” would involve if necessary commandeering one broadcast station in every market to simulcast every time there is one, whether or not they wanted to, and then we get the question: which events merit that? Trinopus has brought up the problems with that kind of arrangement.
Daring to try to talk about the issue raised in the OP…
Back in the old Over-the-Air only broadcast days, yes television license holders had an obligation under the law to air at least some of their programming to further certain government interests. That was the trade off for being allowed a commercial license to exclusively use a portion of the public airwaves.
Educational programming for kids and political programming were two areas of programming that helped broadcasters meet the Public Interest Standard requirement. Since major political debates would help a broadcaster meet it’s license requirements the networks generally aired such programming.
But now the political campaigns have expanded and media has expanded into cable programming that does not have to meet the Public Interest Standard requirements for OTA broadcasters. Still, even cable channels are bound by the Equal Time rule and by FCC regulations that provide for equal access to airtime for advertising on an equal basis.
However debates have, since 1983, been exempted from the Equal Time rule as bona fide news events, so long as the debate is not hosted by the media station. This allowed independently run debates to exclude minor political party candidates. While it might be interesting to hear more voices, debates could become quite unwieldy if every single candidate for President had to be provided access to every debate.
So, to address the OP, mandating OTA coverage of a debate would seem a bit like mandating which news event(s) must be covered, a road I would be very hesitant to go down. That would raise the somewhat scary notion of who in government gets to decide what is (or is not) newsworthy.
The easy target, obviously. Fox News is one of the most biased media outlets available.
If you didn’t “know” that, then “you” don’t “know” what you’re “talking” “about.”
According to the OP, it wasn’t freely available live, though I can’t confirm that except to say that it’s been a consistent policy of most of these cable channels to provide live streaming only to verified subscribers.
The fact that Fox chose at this time and in this circumstance to make this available doesn’t change the principle of what has been discussed. Next time they might make a different decision. The principle here is that it shouldn’t be up to them – they shouldn’t “own” this, as if it was a movie or a sports event, and furthermore, the distribution should have been a lot wider than a subscription cable channel.
Anyway, thank you for the link. I watched the whole thing, and I differ greatly with those who said that since the media were covering it, actually watching it wasn’t necessary. The media reports – at least the ones I saw – didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what went on, focusing mainly on the stupid feud between Trump and Kelly. Having actually seen the thing, I’m now convinced that most of these candidates are raving lunatics, and the Fox moderators weren’t much better except for Chris Wallace.
A good number of the Fox viewers appeared to be unhinged, as well. For those who didn’t watch, the last viewer question that the moderator panel pulled from Facebook was whether any of the candidates had heard from God recently, and if so, what was God telling them to do. I swear I’m not making this up, and I doubt that anyone in the Fox viewing audience was bright enough to submit that question as a prank. In any case, the question was somberly conveyed to the candidates who proceeded to dutifully try to answer it. Most of them couldn’t pass up the opportunity to imply, one way or another, that God was their personal adviser. I’m not sure if this is really such a plus. This is the guy that Bush said he consulted about Iraq, and according to Bush, the Creator of the Universe told him to go for it.