The role of the mass media regarding politics, in my opinion, is to provide the American people with factual and unbiased information. For the most part they do a decent job of this, but I believe there is still a lot of room to improve. One area in particular that I would like to see improved is how much news anchors press politicians for a straight clean-cut answer. We see too often how a politician will get asked a specific question but will then answer in a way that jumps around a true answer. The anchors or journalists simply just let it go. One area I wish to see this improved is in presidential debates.
One problem I see with current presidential debates, is that the moderators allow the candidates to dodge certain questions. This allows the candidate to not take responsibility for something they have done or something they believe in. They dodge certain questions because they know they could lose potential votes if their true colors came out about a certain issue. It is the media's responsibility to accurately show the American people what policies a candidate believes in, and this can't be properly done if the politician's are constantly dodging questions. This article describes the art of "dodging" and how many people do not notice that it is happening: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/22/opinion/la-oe-rogers-debates-20120923 .
I believe a hindrance on the matter of presidential debates is that the news station relies on profits from commercials. What I would like to see is a non-profit news station take over the debates and clear a five hour window with no commercial breaks. The debate may not take five hours, but I think it should be available if needed. There should then be a moderator that knows what each candidate believes in, and should have a set list of questions to get the ball rolling. It irritates me when I watch a debate to hear the moderator say that Candidate A only has 30 seconds to respond. What? How can you put a time limit on the potential future leader of the most powerful country in the world? Each candidate should be given as much time as they would like to answer and respond to the other candidate. The moderator should only be there to ensure that each candidate fully answers the questions asked. One more note on the moderator: If he/she asks a question such as "What kind of pizza do you prefer?" then that person should be banned from any future debates.
A few people have said that a Lincoln-Douglas style of debating should be implemented. This style of debating involves Candidate A speaking for 1 hour, Candidate B speaking and rebutting for 1 1/2 hours, and Candidate A closing the debate by speaking for 30 minutes. This style of debate involves no questions from anyone and no moderator. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/3/obama-and-romney-should-debate-lincoln-douglas-sty/ . While I think this style would be interesting to see, I would prefer to see each candidate discuss every aspect of their policies and have the candidates battle it out with one another. Maybe instead of having a moderator, have a panel of 3-4 people who's only purpose is to be a fact checker. This would be my Utopia of presidential debates.
I totally get what you are saying Brigan. I was listening to the candidates for the next Mayor of Atlanta on the radio this morning while on my way to work. They were all saying some very great and wonderful things, everything potential voters wanted to hear. They touched on a little bit of everything and they all had a strategy and when they were asked certain questions, you could hear then hesitate a bit and play with the words as they were trying to get their responses on point. On those radio interviews, all you can do is listen. Therefore, you can hear every bit of hesitation if you're paying attention and I was just wondering what they really wanted to say in the place of those perfect answers they were spitting out. Politicians, you really want to trust them and put the best in office, but you just never truly know during those campaigning periods :(
ReplyDeleteBrian great post. I agree with you about these new types of debates. I do also see a lot of politicians dodging these moderator's questions. Sometimes they use the new question time to go back and talk about the last topic they were debating or just start on a new topic all together. They have the potential to run all over the moderator and can just completely go off topic if the moderator is not picked well. There have been several examples of this with recent debates for VP and presidency.
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