2008 Primaries, Views on News • April 17th, 2008

The ABCs of the Dem debate

by Chris Lato

Wow, is ABC being raked over the coals for its handling of Wednesday’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I can’t say it’s unjustified.

For starters, the questions coming from Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were, for a good stretch of time, pretty idiotic. At one point, I left the room and my wife yelled at me to come back to the TV to get a load of the latest stupid question being posed. And we were far from alone in this reaction: TV critic/analyst Tom Shales has a great column that breaks down just how much of a wasted opportunity this debate really was.

Still others were fired up over ABC’s bizarre decision to have Stephanopoulos co-anchor the debate. After all, he was a top dog in the Bill Clinton White House. Seems kinda biased, no?

This is an interesting question and I have some personal experience on this one. As a former reporter who later worked for the Wisconsin Republican Party, then returned to reporting for a time in 2007 as an anchor/reporter for WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee, I took some heat from those who asked how I could be unbiased after working for the evil GOP. I did stay unbiased (I received not a single complaint about perceived bias during my nine months on-air). I have no doubt Stephanopoulos is sensitive to this charge too.

Still, co-hosting a debate in which one of the participants was a confidante and the wife of your former boss is a little different. And, indeed, ABC is accused of being pro-Clinton on this debate. That is the risk they took by putting Stephanopoulos in charge.

Obama is obviously paying attention and reaping the benefits, using the generally sour debate reaction to his advantage.

Poor Hillary just can’t land a punch on this guy. We’ll see if the poll numbers in Pennsylvania hold up, or if this whole thing will all be over a bit before the convention.

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