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People pissed at ABC



  3. uroborus8
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ABC failed the public according to thousands of commenters and bloggers following the democratic debate. The NY Times reported 17,600 posts on the ABC News website immediately following the debate, most of which are critical. At the time of this post there were over 19,000 messages (you can read them here: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/story?i... )

The NY Times said, "If there was a common theme, it was that Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos had front-loaded the debate with questions that many viewers said they considered irrelevant when measured against the faltering economy or the Iraq war, like why Senator Barack Obama did not wear an American flag pin on his lapel. Others rapped the journalists for dwelling on matters that had been picked over for weeks, like the incendiary comments of Mr. Obama’s former pastor, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertion that she had to duck sniper fire in Bosnia more than a decade ago."

The people are smarter than the moderators questions, and they demand our media to hold our politicians accountable on important issues. Even the candidates thought the debate was wasted. Obama said, "We set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people."

What would you like to ask the candidates?
uroborus8

22 responses // People pissed at ABC

  • Thanks uroborus for posting this. I am glad to hear that ABC got an earful from its constituents. And that Obama said, "We set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people."
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    Julie_Soller
  • But as Obama kept repeatiing again last night in the debate, that this is all part of the old politics, and he's talking about a different kind of poitics. He must be correct, he keeps diving in to using NeoCon negative campaigning on fellow democrats, like sending out an expanded version of his NAFTA Hillary Attack mailer, using quotes already disputed by Newsday the last time he sent this out in Ohio.

    http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/17/212321/172

    I guess he'll wait to use North Carolina to send out the old Republican attack mailer on Hillary's Universal Health Care that he dug up from 1992.

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/obama-does-...

    More lies and hypocrisy from Obama
    inSFNM
  • psshffft. Obama came out looking GOOD last night, irritable to say the least to have to answer to such lowliness. He's an intellectual hero.

    in all fairness, Hillary did well too, especially when talking about Iraq.
    stephenthomson
  • MoveOn.org launched a petition against ABC today which you can read about here:

    http://realist-idealist.com/2008/04/17/when-media-fails...

    There is no excuse in the midst of the populace trying to make a very important decision that their sources of information be incompetent.
    JakeBrewer
  • Maybe we could have a Current debate mediated by us, the uncontrolled but intellectually curious masses!
    uroborus8
  • I like the way you think uroborus8.
    nkeg87
  • I will posture this in defense of the mediators: that perhaps the mediators didn't want to be asking those stupid questions anymore than we wanted them to. but they asked them because they knew the demographic of the people whose votes Obama and Hilary are trying to win in the coming primaries. Those same people who really do cling to guns and religion, and whether or not one wears a flag lapel. lame as it is, I think the question served Obama well because he was allowed to engage the audience while also elevating the conversation.
    stephenthomson
  • stephenthomson, you may be on to something. There are a lot of naive people out there. During a recent conversation with a 60 something Texan I was told that Obama was a Muslim and that is why he does not wear the flag on his lapel. I laughed at her.

    Nevertheless, questions like those ABC asked only adds fuel the fire. If they asked probing intelligent questions, the lapel flag issue would die... hopefully.
    uroborus8
  • ahh but there's the rub. the lapel issue likely WOULD NOT have died if they had not given Obama a chance to defend himself. which he not only did, but he also engaged that same moronic audience intellectually, encouraging them to look beyond the pettiness, but without saying "you stupid fucking morons" which is what I would have said.
    stephenthomson
  • it's good that people are taking note, but where were the people for the last eight years when Bush was getting a free ride? So they ask Obama some questions he felt uncomfortable with and the blogoshere that adores him and does nothing but talk about the same insignifcant trash on the blogs goes crazy... Well, I suppose it's a start. I would also suppose no questions on the climate crisis were asked either, but that wasn't the reason for the anger of those writing in?
    JanforGore
  • I am happy to read that ABC is being called out for this. If it looks like sh*t and smells like sh*t its probably mainstream media and politics!

    Everyone who already posted on this-a very nice conversation, thank you for the thoughtful discussion.
    aburk72
  • this isn't the first time that the media danced around issues pretending the people wouldn't notice. isn't that why they get paid the big bux? i'm not impressed.
    contingent_reality
  • Let me explain something to everyone. Every question that is imposed on the running mates is first reviewed by the candidates and then they either say nay or yea to what they are going to answer. Now watch when it is a 3 way race and watch how the questions are about the real issues that America faces. That my friends would be because the republicans are asking for serious questions in order to win.

    I didn't watch the debate, I rarely do. But for the public to really want to know why Obama didn't wear a flag on his suit is petty. From reading these post, neither party has the capability to run this country although, I am still stuck on who I am going to vote for.
    Then again, McClain is going to win anyway because Bush knows how to cheat and who in congress going to send out letters or a televised message asking everyone to submit their vote by email, mail or telegram. We will never know but the only way we will find out who is the most experienced is to vote them in and see. There will be people disappointed no matter what the president does. So get over it and vote anyways.
    cheche_201
  • I'll tell you what, I just discovered current.com on my cable network about two weeks ago. Since then, I have not tuned into a network news channel one time. I am so tired of the mind numbing media trying to hypnotize me into being blind of what surrounds me. Issues are of no relevance anymore in the mainstream media.

    CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, and any other corporate, money mongering machine - bleed out and die please!
    logicmaster
  • MSM led Americans to think they wanted a president they would have a beer with. I wish they could have had a beer with George W. and left him at the bar.

    Al Gore should have led us into the new millennium, not an average Joe, with Darth Vader as his side kick. What a different world it could have been with Al Gore’s environmental insight and a lock box on Social Security.
    Conniepae
  • I guess they were looking for sensationalism not substance. All hail the God of ratings.
    StuntBunny
  • This is great. People just aren't sitting back and letting the networks be lazy with the [censored] they have been putting on TV lately. Ha, now if we can get this same fervor going about our people in Iraq...
    AreOh
  • I'm always annoyed when moderators try to dress up attacks as pesudeo-serious inquires:

    "My question is for Sen. Obama. Senator, on On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Throughout this entire campaign you have repeatedly refused to account for your whereabouts on September 7 and have never publically addressed the incident. Senator, what kind of assurances can you give the American people that you didn't give the order to have Tupac murdered?"

    Obama explains that, no, he was neither in the car that shot at Tupac nor gave the order to have him killed.

    "Thank you Sen. Hillary, the same question to you. Do you think Obama is a cold blooded murderer and do you feel he gave an convincing explaination of his whereabouts?"

    Ever notice how the more outrageous the question the more serious the moderators look? Charlie Gibson has his glasses perched on the end of his nose as if her were a Harvard Law Professor and he is pouring over the notes before him. He's got all the props to make him look like a "serious journalist" but we can all see he's just an overpaid teleprompt-reader with an ax to grind.
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    crob80227
  • People should be pissed at ABC and all the others that keep trying to drag us all back to politics as usual. We have a unique opportunity to transcend the status quo for the first time since JFK was. John McCain and Barack Obama get that. They are something other than the standard politician like their vanquished opponents Romney, Giuliani, Edwards and sadly Clinton.

    Sen. Clinton could have been part of the next level politics and was at first simply by default but eventually fell back into the same old grind that we've seen for decades. She didn't get how much people wanted something - ANYTHING, different from the norm. Relying mostly on her name to get her where she wanted to go, unfortunately it didn't take her as far as she thought it might.

    WE THE PEOPLE, are tired of the same ridiculous he said/she said, Rove style politics that gave us seven plus years of W. Why ABC &/or the moderators of that debate thought it was a good idea to try and drag us back into that, we may never know but it should be very apparent to all by now that we are done with all that. If they or anyone else can't get with that then just step aside and be left in the past.
    eldamon
  • people need to remember that this debate was mostly had to get Pennsylvanians ready to vote. As we move on after this we'll have other debates tailored for other primaries. I should hope that when it comes to the general election, the REAL issues are debated thoroughly.
    stephenthomson
  • http://current.com/items/88909501_abc_debate_a_disgrace...
    here's another perspective as well...
    shampton
  • Indeed, this race is so inordinately long there's nothing constructive left to talk about. No one comes out of this looking good. I think there is room to address issues like Obama's pastor or Hillary's Bosnia sniper tale. But do we need to cling to these issues this much, to the point where they're overtaking all media? We need to get back on track and talk about what matters. This debate should have been nixed in the first place.
    AndySF

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