CNN’s valiant effort to make Tim Russert look better

November 16, 2007

At 8pm last night, the debate in Las Vegas was supposed to begin, but CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was the only person on the stage. Apparently, this was intentional — CNN wanted to show the audience “what a photo op looks like.” Blitzer, after introducing the candidates one at a time, told the audience, “We thought, You know what? We’re going to bring that to you as well tonight.” Why? Because it presumably makes better television than the actual debate?

Later, when members of the audience got a chance to ask question, we saw this gem:

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: LaShannon Spencer, please stand up for a moment. What is your question?

LASHANNON SPENCER: We constantly hear health care questions and questions pertaining to the war. But we don’t hear questions pertaining to the Supreme Court justice or education. (Applause.) My question is, if you are elected president, what qualities must the appointee possess?

MS. MALVEAUX: I’d like to get to Senator Dodd, if you would. And in answering that question, also tell us whether or not you would require your nominees to support abortion rights.

Got that? A smart voter asked a smart question. As someone who cares a lot about the Supreme Court, I was genuinely curious to hear the candidates’ responses. But CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux decided the voter’s question wasn’t quite good enough, so she decided to “fix” it, twisting it into a more conventional question about litmus tests.

After Dodd answered the question, Blitzer added insult to injury: “All right, let’s go through the whole panel. I want everybody to weigh in. This is an important question that was raised. I’ll start with Senator Biden. Would you insist that any nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court supported abortion rights for women?”

In other words, according to Blitzer, the “important question that was raised” wasn’t the one from the undecided voter, it was the one from Suzanne Malveaux who changed the important question from the undecided voter.

These insufferable debates can be difficult enough to endure. CNN seemed anxious to make the event akin to root-canal surgery.

This wasn’t just because CNN is bad at this — though it is — it’s because Team Blitzer hosted the debate in the hopes of pushing the candidates into political controversies. Actually informing the public was an afterthought.

As ever, it’s really striking to observe the difference between the audience-generated questions and the journalist-generated questions. Wolf Blitzer’s main interest is in asking questions designed to put Democrats on the wrong side of public opinion, even if those questions are about things like driver’s licenses or “merit pay” for teachers that aren’t really under federal purview. Efforts to reframe those questions by putting those topics in the larger context of immigration policy more generally or education more generally are derided as cowardly dodges. The point, after all, is to force a choice — piss off an interest group, or say something that could be used in a GOP attack ad.

The real people, by contrast, ask about problems in their lives. The mother of an individual ready reserve member wants to know about Iran policy. The mother of an active duty soldier wants to know about military pay versus pay for military contractors. An Arab-American wants to know about racial profiling. Then the candidates explain what they think about these issues.

The voters are curious and want to learn where the candidates stand. Blitzer doesn’t care about informing the public about the issues — he actually objects when candidates try to explain their views on broad immigration policy issues — he’s just interested in trying to embarrass the candidates.

A few times, the candidates — most notably Biden and Obama — pushed back against Blitzer’s annoying habits, but not enough.

I’d have been tempted to endorse the candidate who said, “Wolf, just shut up.”

Post Script: As Oliver Willis noted, the post-debate wrap-up was just as bad.

Seriously, on CNN they had a segment with John King in the campaign spin room and he “reported” that Clinton campaign people came into the room saying she did well. REALLY? You went into the SPIN room and PAID OPERATIVES of a campaign think that THEIR OWN candidate did well? Even if you want to posit that from an objective viewpoint that Sen. Clinton did well, the LAST PEOPLE in the world you should be citing on this should be her paid campaign operatives. That’s not journalism, that’s repetition.

There has to be a better way of covering a political event.

It would be wonderful if we could have elections to select news commentators. Would anyone vote for Blitzer or Malveaux?

  • I remember one of the debates a while back, when in the post-debate coverage on one of the channels (maybe it was Fox?) the person said something to the efffect that “Ok, now we’re going to have spokespersons from the different campaigns on, and of course they’re all here to say their candidate did well.” It seemed kind of bad manners and icky to be setting it up and framing it for the audience- kind of like if you go on a first date with a person, and all of a sudden they’re only talking about dating as you’re sitting there with them at a dinner table in a restaurant.

    I guess they wanted to make sure that if any of the Democrats spokepeople were able to put their candidates in a good light, that people took it with a grain of salt.

  • Blitzer and Russert vividly show (and personify) that their brand of journalism is in its last throes–thrashing and twitching wildly for some sort of relevance in today’s world as the rest of the world evolves around and away from them and they, slowly and painfully (to slowly for me), petrify into the vestigial media journalists that they are.

  • Digby had an interesting take on Chris Matthews recently. She asked why none of the magazines have done features on him. I’d love to see an expose on the foibles of the major commentators – not personal life, but overt prejudices. Rush, Hannity and Billy O get all of the attention (because they are nutcases) but I would like to see some journalistic light cast on the other “main stream” bozos.

  • Regarding my last comment– The effect of the statement was really like, “Now we’re going to show you a bunch of BS”- first thing out of the guy’s mouth before introducing the first spokesperson. I think the person actually used the word “spin.”

    It was like, they were going to show some of the campaigns’ spokespeople, because they knew it was what political people would expect of them, but they wanted all the regular people out there to feel like it’s not worth watching or taking seriously.

  • CNN is owned by AOL/Time-Warner with Randy Falco at the helm. It’s the largest owner of cable systems in the US with an estimated 13 million subscribers. Does anybody want to guess at Randy Falco’s politics?

    Maybe there’s a time when candidates ought to be backed into corners about issues they’re waffling on, but not by the hosts hijacking a genuine audience question to put forward the sponsors’ political agenda. It’s only a step below candidates planting questions, which nobody likes much.

    It would be cool if candidates didn’t fall for these manipulations. Everybody could have answered LaShannon Spencer’s question and ignored the hosts’ attempts to change the focus.

  • While Russert certainly can be criticized, I think CNN in general has devolved past the point that you can even use the word journalism to describe what they do. At least the NBC debates now how to corral a crowd, but when has a debate ever been this loaded with partisans for one candidate or another and actually allowed to boo. It was disgraceful. I don’t know why the Dems would shun debating on Fox. I can’t imagine a debate there would be any worse than the show CNN put on last night. It started bad with the “You never get to see the photo op, so let’s waste time showing it to you” and only got worse from there.

  • I was only half-listening, but one debater responded along the lines of “well, i’ll answer Lashannon’s question, than get to Suzanne’s mindless hijacking of the question.” the audience loved it.

  • I love how Obama is making a habit of hitting back at Wolf, saying “This is about the third question which is based on an assumption that you can’t do something”

    Think back to an earlier debate: Wolf said, “Raise your hand if English should be the official language”. Obama openly said Wolf is doing a “disservice to the American people”. Me love it.

    And Kucinich was good too: “Wolf, I reject the premise of your question”.

  • Anney wrote:

    Maybe there’s a time when candidates ought to be backed into corners about issues they’re waffling on, but not by the hosts hijacking a genuine audience question to put forward the sponsors’ political agenda.

    I think it’s more to the point that the whole thing is structured to try to put Dems in a position of losing moderate votes.

    Imagine you have a best bud who is really hard-up to get a girlfriend. You’re in college, and he’s really into this sorority of relatively hot young women, who will date all sorts of guys, but who are into a lot of kinky, humiliating, semi-dominatrix stuff. Basically it’s hazing, and they expect guys who want to date a girl at their sorority to go through one of their rituals, and to try to bring his buds to witness it. Will you go and watch your shy, mild, pitiable friend go through all this crap for over and hour, just because he really wants a girlfriend, but he could probably find a better girl in no time just by learning to keep his chin up and a little bit about how to handle himself? Women, imagine a similar sort of situation (but I supposed with different details) involving a girlfriend. This is what these Democratic debates are like.

  • ***…Suzanne Malveaux…***

    If I have to make a dart-board for every word-twisting idiot being given a podium by the MunchkinStreamMedia, I’ll have to add on to the house—bigtime….

  • Ohioan, it sounds though like they have to find a more colloquial way of telling Wolf he’s full of BS– a little closer to just telling him literally that he’s full of BS.

    A lot of people might miss the point behind that lawyer-language.

  • I tell you what I would like to see.

    One, get rid of the high-profile “moderator.”

    Two, get rid of the podium format – give ‘em each a stool or a comfortable chair and a hand-held microphone.

    Three, put them in front of smaller groups.

    Make it a first-come, first-served event. Invite them to come 2 hours before the event is scheduled to start, and set up areas for each of a variety of issues. Ask them to discuss among themselves what questions they want answers to and allow them to have some agreed-upon number of questions – say two questions, with some time for follow-up. Ask each group to designate one person to ask each question. This way, you’d get good questions from people who are involved in the whole process and would be looking for something more than platitudes. The candidates can each have time to address the question, or they can address it in a discussion format.

    Take the Russerts and Blitzers and their ilk out of it – make it as close to being a one-on-one (candidates to the people) event as possible. Have local community-types to help with the organization.

    I know the high-profile types would have a cow, but they’d get over it.

  • MR. BLITZER: So what’s more important, human rights or national security?

    SEN. DODD: Well, obviously national security, keeping the country safe. When you take the oath of office on January 20th you promise to do two things, and that is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and protect our country against enemies both foreign and domestic. The security of the country is number one, obviously, yes, all right?

    Excuse me, Senator, the oath of office is not a la carte. geez, you think he would know better.

  • Interesting that there’s no media uproar when the networks stage these debates, manage and manipulate them to produce maximum ratings (in their minds), choose and twist questions, boss the candidates around and treat them like school children, etc. etc.

    Then Hillary plants a question or two to get her positions out on such trivial matters as global warming or whatnot, and all hell breaks loose, Hillary the cheater, the manipulator, up to her old tricks.

    Sigh.

  • “What’s more important – human rights or national defense.”

    Which one of your kids do you love the most?

  • Have we all forgotten, my friends, that we no longer have a fourth estate in this country? I believe its demise came during the Reagan administration.
    Therefore, we do not have journalism.
    What we have is entertainment for profit. What a convenient coincidence that a campaign is called a r”ace”, because political campaigns are served up to the populace exactly the way sporting events are. Who’s winning? Why are they wining? Oh, let’s do an up-close and personal on the music preferences of this candidate’s teen age children.
    It’s a well proven formula in sports broadcasting.

  • Three ideas for changes to the debate format, from most to least serious:

    1) Let each candidate either moderate a full debate or control the discussion for 20 minutes, asking questions of his/her competitors.

    2) Take the full time available to debate–say, 110 minutes of the two hours of airtime last night–subtract a set amount of time for the asking of questions–5 minutes–and then divide the remainder (105 minutes) among however many candidates are on the stage (seven, last night). They’ve each got 15 minutes available to speak. They can use that 15 minutes however they want–a long harangue, a mix of longer answers and shorter answers, a closing statement, et cetera. But once they use it, their mic is cut off.

    3) Every candidate has to drink a shot of bourbon every 15 minutes. Only the last half-hour of the debate is available for media clips afterward. (Admittedly this probably gives Richardson and Dodd an edge among the current Dems.)

  • It’s irritating that these “debates” act as vehicles for the corporations putting them on and the questioning is all twisted to the sensationalist “gotcha” vein, but even worse is the fact that the “gotchas” are all right wing talking points and Republican-favored lightning rods. How much more blatant can the MSM be that they are working hard to get another Republican elected president?

  • Last nights debate was a disgrace. CNN and Wolf Blitzer allowed hecklers in the audience intentionally. I say that because not once did Wolf admonish the hecklers when they booed Edwards or Obama. It was an absolute disgrace.

    CNN and Wolf thought they were helping Clinton but what they actually did was highlight the fact that Hillary can’t handle a debate when she’s challenged. She can’t debate fair and square.

    They allowed the Clinton campaign to fill that audience with Clinton supporters and those supporters were given instructions to boo Edwards and Obama whenever they attempted to challenge Clinton’s record. Can you imagine that? A person running for the highest office in the land and she has to get her supporters to boo the other candidates to survive a debate in tact? This should not be allowed to stand.

    As a woman I am embarrassed. Why couldn’t we have a female candidate running who has honesty, integrity, and character? Hillary is an embarrassment to all women. Hillary can’t handle the debates and she can’t handle the job.

  • Why are questions decided ahead of time such a bad thing™?

    At least then we’d know they’d cover the issues across the whole debate.

    PS: No one reported Clinton’s answer to the jewelry question…

  • “What did you expect?”, said the scorpion to the frog as he stung him with his tail. “You knew I was a scorpion when you put me on your back for a ride to the other island”.

    Blitzer’s ego prevents him from seeing how pathetic he made the debate, and what a fool he shows himself to be. What did the dem’s candidates expect..fairness, open discussions about the issues. They should have known it would all be about how to divide and conquer, to set groups against individual candidates, to find spots the GOP could use for talking points and to smear the candidates with. These are the “Ambush Debates” yet the dems keep attending them. This is what it means to have the media owned and operated by the same small group of people. Can’t even have an open debate without a hidden agenda from the corporate owned media’

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