Posted on 10/30/2015 9:59:44 AM PDT by abb
Mr. Andrew Lack Chairman, NBC News 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, New York 10112
Dear Mr. Lack,
I write to inform you that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016. The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns.
The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith. We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance.
CNBC billed the debate as one that would focus on “the key issues that matter to all voters—job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy.†That was not the case. Before the debate, the candidates were promised an opening question on economic or financial matters. That was not the case. Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness. That was not the case. Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive. The first question directed to one of our candidates asked if he was running a comic book version of a presidential campaign, hardly in the spirit of how the debate was billed.
While debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates’ visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC’s moderators engaged in a series of “gotcha†questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates’ policies and ideas.
I have tremendous respect for the First Amendment and freedom of the press. However, I also expect the media to host a substantive debate on consequential issues important to Americans. CNBC did not.
While we are suspending our partnership with NBC News and its properties, we still fully intend to have a debate on that day, and will ensure that National Review remains part of it.
I will be working with our candidates to discuss how to move forward and will be in touch.
Sincerely,
Reince Priebus Chairman, Republican National Committee
Good observation. It is past time for the candidates to create a better format.
We have seen the old paradigm is unworkable and even Fox News, who had a chance to really make a new type of debate--could not resist the siren call of the old meme of trash the GOP.
Pray for Trump and for protection for him--if it were not for him, this race would be a disaster by now.
http://press.nbcnews.com/2015/10/30/statement-from-nbc-news/
STATEMENT FROM NBC NEWS
October 30, 2015 Ali Zelenko
Statement from NBC News:
“This is a disappointing development. However, along with our debate broadcast partners at Telemundo we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party.â€
“Bush has not signed on then?”
You’re going to hurt yourself with that tongue jammed into your cheek. :-)
Give Jeb time. He has to check with his Dad and his donors, then get a burner phone to call Reince and the boys at NBC to figure out how to make this look gutsy and bold and independent. You know, real presidential and leaderly and all. Then there’s the off-the-cuff comments announcing his gutsy, yet joyful, boldness that he has to memorize. But first, they gotta get written.
Patience, grasshopper. These things don’t just plan themselves overnight.
Reguarding those funky characters, I do some blogging on the Atlanta Braves, and I have observed them creeping into some of my posts there.
We use WordPress for web publishing, and sometimes we see the same artifacts. I’m not certain if they come from character encoding, though that’s my best guess. When cut-n-pasted around, though, they tend to proliferate.
99% of them are attributable to the various versions of quotation marks... most often the curly variety. A straight substitution - if that’s possible - will probably limit the hassle they present. But curiously enough, as I see below, they tend to multiply like rabbits when cut-n-pasted.
Example: “gotchaâ€Â
change to “gotcha”
The way the MSNBC debate format was supposed to work was to put Jeb Bush on top. But the GOP debate format strategery has back fired, thanks to Ted Cruz and the Trumpinator who negotiated the 3 hours down.
Doom on Priebus, whose days as RNC chairman are now very numbered indeed. Priebus has effed up big time and the elite GOP country club puppet masters are very angry, Buahahahahahahaha! The GOP elite now have to bail on their annointed ones: Jeb Bush and Marco the liberal Tubio.
Priebus has become a great dufus help to the conservative cause.
>> I think our candidates (minus Jeb, of course) are in full rebellion mode.
Do you think they will attend the RNC Convention? Would they accept an RNC nomination?
I am convinced this was done KNOWINGLY by the RNC to cause chaos with TRUMP!! They were hoping to force a mistake. My opinion is several candidates should drop out until Priebus resigns.
NO NO. Go back and watch. Trump was accused, before Cruz did his great job , of making a statement he didn’ ever make— Run it back.
Why pay for a network anything? Just put it out on YouTube.
Yes, Trump was accused. But Cruz made the MSM-crushing statements.
Why not have Mark Levin, Michael Savage and Rush alimbaugh moderate the next democrat debate? - It’s only fair?
I agree with you. We just attribute the underlying reason for the RNC’s latest action to different things.
Years ago we saw the same thing when people first started doing cut/paste of things from microsoft documents into news articles. It's almost all font-based. People apparently can't handle using a simple ascii single-quote or double quote characters because they aren't pretty enough looking I guess. I'm an old timer, but I really think text should be standard ascii characters. It causes a lot less formatting problems.
It could also be unicode problems.There are many, many aspects of unicode that really suck.
A few months ago, Donald Trump broadcast a speech on the internet. We need to build on that beginning and start “broadcasting” Republican debates on the internet.
Don’t worry... They’ll get over it soon enough.
PreeBus needs to go.
“The Trump Affect.”
Yep. After all, least anyone forget already, the only reason the others dared blast the kommiemedia the way they did is that many weeks ago Trump FIRST demonstrated that one could push back against the biased media, and not only survive, but actually thrive. Now, of course, it seems like Republicans have ALWAYS pushed back against the ProgMedia. But it’s actually been only a few weeks, and only because of Trump.
‘Bush has not signed on then?’
The article said the organizers were ‘reaching out’ to the other candidates. By Sunday they may have them all. I’ll keep looking for updates.
Interesting.
Great for the base, but this should have be handled prior to the debate season. It will be used to fire up the other side.
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