Posted on 06/26/2024 4:11:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The impending Presidential debate on Thursday is colliding with a recurring rhetorical problem: the Presidential debate moderators. Since the inception of televised presidential debates in 1960 with the debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the problem of debate moderators has been persistent. In the academic ideal of debate, moderators would exert no argumentative influence upon the debate. Moderators would, as the term implies, mitigate the partisan excesses potential to such an event. This is a profound concern since presidential campaigns are exerting some of the most powerful ideological convictions of the nation. Presently, concerns are raised by the Trump campaign and its supporters that Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will not be fair as the CNN moderators in this first Presidential debate of 2024. Those concerns have historical foundation both specifically and generally. Without correction of the problem of journalist moderators, the public will continue to escalate the sense of partisan frustration and grow increasingly impatient for the obvious solution of more dispassionate and fair debates.
In the 21st century, journalist debate moderators have exclusively occupied the presidential debate moderator position. Despite a proliferation of rules governing the debates, there are no rules governing the journalist moderators. This in the past 25 years leads to a growing domination of the journalist moderators. In 2020, Fox News journalist Chris Wallace surpassed the 25% of time speaking threshold. In the 20th century, moderators often spoke less than 10% of the time. The lengthy questions offered by journalists combined with excessively short answer times such as 90 seconds create a communication context ripe for misunderstanding and misstatements. This compression of candidate time and expansion of journalist speaking time is an important contributor to the volatile conduct of Biden and Trump in debate number one of 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Republicans need to stop agreeing to these corrupt debates. Just refuse to be put through the biased process and make speeches explaining why.
I agree. This is a travesty and it is 100% the fault of Republicans. I have no idea what they are thinking.
Easy. Don’t have “moderators” ask questions. Have the participants pose questions and respond amongst themselves.
Or have a moderator from each side. I think a debate moderated by Tucker Carlson and Bill Maher would get ratings.
Mike Wallace may have a few pointers if you can find him.
But that’s still not actually a debate. It is in interview panel.
Chris Wallace correction.
But the questions would be about things people actually care about. Nobody cares about Gaza when they are struggling to feed their family.
Mods should only be time-keepers and just introduce a topic, but not an actual question. For instance: Illegal Immigration - Mr. Biden, you have two minutes. Then Mr. Trump, you have two minutes. Then, Mr. Biden, you may ask Mr. Trump one question and he has two minutes to respond. Then Mr. Trump you may ask Mr. Biden one question and he has two minutes to respond. Then next topic. That would be useful.
Pretty much my thoughts.
Each candidate would provide half the questions.
A time keeper would ask the question alternating between the two parties.
A timer light would indicate when the candidate was running out of time.
The candidate/s mike would be cut when he was out of time.
I think having the candidate select the question would provide a more illuminating and lively debate.
This would also make it less likely that one candidate would get the questions before the debate as happened with Hillary vs. Trump.
The moderator need only get the questions the day of the event.
Like lawyers for each side getting to ask questions of witnesses on direct and cross examination. That would give each candidate a chance to talk about both their positive agenda/proposals, as well as have to respond to criticisms.
The selection of topics itself is susceptible to bias.
common sense doesn’t work in politics
Why are so many people afraid to just have the candidates debate each other?
It’s as if we’ve got lots of MSM executives here who want to promote their news personalities in prime time.
The point is it has gotten to be more of a spectacled media production and less of what it should be. Kind of like the NFL Draft. Maybe DJT likes this, because he likes spectacles... many say it’s 3 against 1 forget in 2016 it was 21 against 1 for many debates during the primary season. Candidates + mods versus DJT.
They have mute on the mics.
Will they have a delay on them? To catch ‘cursing’, you know.
1) stop using democrat-controlled television networks
2) stop using democrat-controlled moderators.
easy
First of all, these are not “debates.” They are joint press conferences. Real debates would demonstrate some weaknesses in our candidates.
People watch these things for the same reason they watch NASCAR; they are looking for a wreck.
Honestly, in terms of learning anything about Presidential Candidates…these things are useless.
The real debates are the TV ads that Biden’s people are flooding the airwaves with.
My fear is that the Trump team is going to make the same mistake as in 2020 and not counter them, because they probably assume nobody watches network TV anymore.
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