ABC Narrows the Field(Did ABC cut coverage of Kucinich/Sharpton/Braun Because they attacked Koppel?)

Fairness and Accuracy in Media ^ | December 11, 2003

[Timesink]

Yeah, it's FAIR, and I'm not sure I believed their claim at all that ABC is retaliating against these candidates for showing up Ted Koppel (the article focuses on Kucinich, but Sharpton got in a nice jab or two as well). But hey, it's Schadenfreude.

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times ABCNEWS Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

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[evad]

ABC's decision was attributed to the fact that these candidates are perceived to have a slim chance of winning the Democratic nomination

Why would this matter?
This is a circus event and these are 3 of the biggest clowns in the tent.

ACTION: Contact ABC and ask them why they have decided to limit their coverage of Kucinich, Sharpton and Moseley Braun

I'm sorry but WHY do we care?

[Paul Atreides]

Heck, it is easy to forget that there are candidates other than Dean and Kerry.

[Timesink]

I'm sorry but WHY do we care?

You shouldn't. I just didn't want to be accused of bias by chopping up a leftist screed, so I posted the whole thing.

[thatdewd]

Sharpton got in a nice jab or two as well

He was great. "I came anyway", LOL.

[Paul Atreides]

so I posted the whole thing.

You just made Santa's "Been Good This Year" list.

[OldFriend]

Frankly, if any of these three candidates gets one dime of matching taxpayer funds it will be an outrage.

[Deb]

Anyone who watched the debate live knows that Koppel also slapped Dean around a fair amount and just about everyone slapped Koppel around. Sharpton, Braun and Kucinich should never have been in the debate. They don't register on any poles. But, like Keyes, if they had been excluded Sharpton and Braun would have never stopped screaming "RACISM!!!!" And if you include them you might as well include the Midget Commie.

I give credit to ABC and all the news outlets for hanging in there this long with the vanity candidates.

[Thud]

I agree. IMO, ABC's motivation is that the field started narrowing with Gore's endorsement of Dean. ABC also has to make money, and keeping those three losers on hurts its news ratings. Consider how Arianna Huffington's participation in the California gubernatorial recall debate pretty much eliminated any substantive value for the debate.

ABC doesn't want to risk viewers going to its competitors to get news of the presidential campaign that doesn't waste their viewing time on hopeless loser candidates.

[Blackyce]

I would pay to keep all three of them in the race. Not only do they dilute the field, but they are the only three actually worth listening to. Braun and Sharpton were the smartest and wittiest people on stage at the debates, and Kucinich is an unabashed Red Communist. They are the only reasons people payed any attention at all to those debates.

[Lancey Howard]

FAIR is just another mouthpiece for the DNC.
Maybe Hillary is concerned that the field is narrowing. It is in her best interests that the nomination end up being brokered at the Democrat convention and so she wants as many people, and as much chaos, as possible in this primary process.
Maybe Hillary ordered FAIR to kick up a fuss.

[Timesink]

More ABCNEWS debate Schadenfreude, courtesy MSNBC:

Hardball crack political correspondent David Shuster is back from New Hampshire and files this Briefing exclusive:

"Given that so much has already been written about the candidates at the debate... we wanted to offer some observations about our 2nd favorite subject... the media covering the debate.

Item #1: Battle of the bus. Jamison [Christina Jamison, Shuster's producer] and I were bewildered when we arrived at the ABC News sponsored debate on the picturesque UNH campus and saw a gigantic campaign bus belonging to CNN (while the ABC version -- heavily promoted this summer -- was MIA. The CNN "Campaign 2004" logo on wheels was quite a sight... and it must have been quite embarrassing to the Disney network. Our friends at ABC told us their bus "wasn't ready yet." Hello? What are you waiting for? The debate in January sponsored by CNN? Even a few students I spoke with seemed confused as to who was broadcasting the debate and who was not. So, how did CNN manage to pull of this pr coup? A few friendly CNN competitors acknowledged that in order to get the bus on the road in time, it was rolled off the assembly line without heaters. Dom, I love politics as much as anybody... but NH was damn cold this week... and CNN's dedication seems borderline psychotic. Brrrr. NBC production note from Jamison: "It's better to be on a bus belonging to a candidate than one following behind."

Item #2. What's the entree? At the media filing center intended to "serve" 500 reporters... Jamison and I could not decide whether the entree was a plate of dried prunes or a plate of dried apricots. The choices at the media filing center (catering, courtesy ABC News) was one of the weirdest combinations we had ever seen. The debate went from 7pm to 830pm... so any food ahead of time or afterwards would normally be considered "dinner." But maybe we were missing something. In addition to the prunes and apricots, your other options included granola and potato chips. Desert was a little better with some tasty cookies and brownies. Some might argue, "you are lucky there was any food at all." Well, in this case, I think we would have preferred "nothing" compared to an effort as lame as this one. Even stranger was the fact that the UNH catering service building was about 50 feet away."

-David Shuster

[xzins]

This is racist.

They clearly have targeted the African-Americans and are not interested in their viewpoint. They have intentionally stopped coverage of the ONLY blacks in the campaign. This is a clear effort to prevent the black viewpoint from gaining delegates. Even more sinister, it is an effort to prevent the black primary vote from NOT being cast for a white candidate. In other words, they wish to USE blacks in the primary as a "poll" of which remaining white candidate is most telegenic with black america. With Sharpton in the race, they are certain that most black votes would end up in his column.

Even Kucinich, being from the Cleveland area, has a special ability to understand black America.

This was racist and targeted and worthy of KKK Robert Byrd, the democrat from West Virginia.

Protest this racist act to ABC.

[arasina]

I'm sure you saw this, Timesink, but thought I'd share two snippets from the Howard Kurtz Washington Post article ("Ted Koppel, Anchor Provocateur: Barbed Questions Stir A Heated Debate") about Koppel's preparations for the debate:

SNIP---In the theater down the hall, nine college students stood at lecterns marked with paper signs for a technical run-through. "General Clark," said the woman standing in for Koppel, "can you tell us what you'd do in Iraq?"

"We cannot allow Dick Cheney to have American governments move in and just rule everything," said a short young man in a sport coat.

In Koppel's makeshift office -- darkened like the one he keeps in Washington -- he did an interview with WMUR reporter Jean Mackin. When the lights were turned on, Mackin asked if the debate would have a big impact on the campaign. "If it doesn't, it will be my fault," he said.

What was his goal in the debate, now 31/2 hours away?

"Keep people at home from dozing off," Koppel said.

From the start, the ABC team knew they would be hamstrung by the crowd onstage. "How did Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun get into this thing?" Koppel asked. "Nobody seems to know. Some candidates who are perceived as serious are gasping for air, and what little oxygen there is on the stage will be taken up by one-third of the people who do not have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination."

SNIP---For Dean, Halperin said, the question should be: "Do you regret not serving in the military?" If Koppel asked a long question about Dean flunking his physical and then going skiing, he would open the door for the former governor to just repeat his rote explanation.

For Sen. John Kerry, Halperin argued, the question should be why he voted to authorize the war in Iraq and has criticized it ever since. "Hand the candidate a rope and let him decide if he's going to hang himself with it," Halperin explained.

[proust]

"I'm sorry but WHY do we care?"

Because covering all 9 dims means each one has less of a chance of getting any traction on their campiagn. If ABC artifically narrows the field, this will cause some of the candiates to get stronger, and do we want that? It's better when it's all 9 and they cancel each other out and split the votes.

[CatOwner]

Is this the kind of nonsense we will be subject to now that most of CFR has been "blessed" by the SCOTUS?

[Cicero]

Frankly, I think all the media are devoting far too much time to these vacuous debates among the dwarves.

This does cause me to speculate, however. My own theory is that Hillary has been behind keeping all nine dwarves going as long as possible, so nobody would break out of the pack and she could then triumphantly emerge from a deadlocked convention.

With Gore's endorsement, Dean has now broken out of the pack. I would speculate that Ted Koppel has decided to thumb his nose at Hillary too, and go with Dean. So he asks the one question Hillary doesn't want asked: Why are we pretending these nine midgets are serious candidates?

[walford]

It's 'Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting' not 'Media.'

Is FAIR to be considered an unbiased source of media scrutiny? Consider its mission statement:
http://www.fair.org/whats-fair.html "As a progressive [italics mine] group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information."

In other words FAIR is against privately owned media, or would like to have the government have considerably more control of any small private media that it is willing to tolerate.

FAIR also attacks Accuracy In Media, saying it “emerges as belonging to one of the mysterious sectors of society that perpetuates this mythology of ‘liberal media’ with a straight face.”

Offering no evidence to the contrary, FAIR simply sneers at the mere thought that the news is biased to the Left. [Indeed were are to be persuaded that the likes of Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings are conservative lapdogs.] AIM dispassionately offers plenty of evidence that the media is biased, and not through “sarcastic jokes and biting satire” as FAIR alleges. We cite specific examples and have data to back up our assertions. http://www.aim.org

William R Alford
Accuracy In Media

[gg188]

I love it when the left eats its own.