ABC’s travesty of a debate
Like any good patriotic American (pardon my choking) I tuned in to the Democratic debate this week. What I saw did not leave me pleased. What ABC did wasn’t just a shoddy job (having George Stephanopoulos, one of Bill Clinton’s senior staff, as “impartial” moderator? C’mon.), it was a travesty. But rather than add to the tens of thousands of outraged comments on ABC’s site, where my chance of getting noticed was rather low, I sent an email directly to some ABC bigwigs. Because I can, I’m going to republish it here and get a blog post out of it as well. Certainly it can engender some good discussion. And hey, if you want to send an email to them as well, be my guest.
To: peter.salinger@abc.com, cristi.d.landes@abc.com, wayne.fisk@abc.com, jeffrey.t.fitzgerald@abc.com, heidi.b.oringer@abc.com, jonathan.m.newman@abc.com, joyce.a.alcantara@abc.com, james.f.kane@abc.com, andrew.l.kalb@abc.com, robert.garcia@abc.com
Don’t you people at ABC feel just the least bit ashamed for the utter travesty of a debate that you aired last night? Not only did you focus nearly exclusively on pointless trivialities when the country as a whole is facing very real problems, but your audience called you on it! They knew they wanted to hear a much more concrete debate than that, and they expressed their displeasure by booing your sham moderators on air! If you won’t yield to common decency in apologizing for this debacle and make strong efforts to elevate political discourse in the future, at least yield to simple common financial sense.
ABC News came off looking like a pack of bumbling, elementary school fools last night. You are completely trashing any positive reputation you once had and are now heading squarely into Fox News territory. My friends and I have sworn off ABC News as a result of last night because we no longer trust you to provide us with the truth or to respect your responsibility as the fourth branch of government in appropriately handling political discourse. The American people know they want better and they demand better. You refuse to give it to them only at your imminent peril.
This madness must end.
April 18th, 2008 at 20:14
I didn’t watch the “debate”; it’s not even fair to call it that because there was no actual debate. We did record it, but I let it expire off without actually watching it. Didn’t need to; the media reports told me everything I needed to know.