Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Objective Debate Moderation

On City Life this morning is Richard Howe arguing that there are objective journalists on MSNBC—or at least one objective journalist.  He didn't say who that one objective journalist would be.  I remember when I thought Chris Matthews was an objective journalist.  Today I think their best shot is Rachel Maddow.

Monday night a friend of mine suggested CNN as the objective moderator for the Presidential debates.  Maybe 25 years ago.

Maybe the answer is a tag team of Rachel Maddow and Shepherd Smith.

An alternative is going back to the Lincoln-Douglas style, but maybe not the full three hours per debate.  For both the Senatorial and the Presidential Debates.

Regards  —  Cliff

2 comments:

  1. Media is, if anything these days, even more partisan than the partisan parties they purport to "cover". Maddow has her moments of objectivity interspersed with her inevitable and liberally-biased revelatory moments. Why not a pair of think-tankers like Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann? (Authors of "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How The American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics Of Extremism"). One is from the American Enterprise Institute and the other is from the Brookings Institute, and between them you get by averaging the middle of the road. That's my suggestion.

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  2. I would fault Elizabeth Warren for refusing to have Fox News sponser.

    If anything it should be sponser by local media though.

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