Are Tim Russert and Brian Williams the Worst Debate Moderators Ever?

from AlterNet's PEEK:



Are Tim Russert and Brian Williams the Worst Debate Moderators Ever?

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 11:14 AM on January 16, 2008.

The candidates keep getting better in these debates. The moderators keep getting worse.



While political observers are understandably divided about who "won" last night's Democratic debate in Las Vegas, it seems everyone who watched can come together in agreement on one underlying point: the moderators were truly awful.

About a half-hour into the debate, an angry man started shouting, interrupting the event while security personnel intervened. Usually, these protestors are easy to dismiss as random nuts, but in this case, the heckler had a legitimate beef.



I've seen debates in which hecklers jeer candidates, and I've seen debates in which hecklers take a stand for one issue or another, but this was the first debate I've seen in which a heckler went after a moderator. Worse, I think the guy was probably right.

Within a few minutes of the interruption, Ezra said, "It's almost impossible for me to convey the damage Tim Russert and Brian Williams are doing to the republic this evening.... It's literally the worst moderation I've yet seen. It's not moderation. It's trivialization. 28 minutes in, there's not been a question about any issue, any cause, any problem."

I'm not sure if I'm prepared to say it was literally the worst I've seen -- the CNN debate in November was pretty offensive -- but by any reasonable measure, last night was breathtakingly bad. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/73959/

imitation aimed at American TV's banality.

I thought Brian Williams was okay, though. Keith would have been better, but we can't expect perfection
every debate.

He is a tool

His questions are mostly worthless. Along the lines of:

In 1986 you said you liked Coke, yet today I see you with a can of diet Pepsi; what gives?

Thats not tough, that's gotcha BS. Just once I'd like someone he's interviewing to say "times change Tim. ...next!" throughout the whole process. Oh and Brian Williams seemed to be emulating that style quite well.

Jay

Oh that's right - we had an event which first required that people raise ungodly amounts of money in order to proceed through two states and acquire delegates' votes.

Then it was on to Nevada. By this point only two or three individuals had any hope of considering themselves eligible, and it was no surprise that two of these three individuals are Corporatist suck ups who are loved by the DLC. And have ablsolutely no understanding of the slim thread of hope that the middle income person in this country is surviving on.

A fourth individual who should have been allowed into the debate was frozen out of it, because his activities against the M$M overlord, (i.e. GE) meant that GE did not want to reward that individual for his activities agaisnt their pet project at Yucca Moutnain.

So did we have slimeballs last night for moderators?

Probably - why would such a slimy process result in anything other than slimy moderators.

When they asked each person to say their greatest strength & greatest weakness, I thought, "Hillary will not mention a weakness." Sure enough, she meandered through a greatest strength and then stopped. Instead of prompting her for a greatest weakness, Russert immediately asked Obama for a rebuttal.

I'm sure I had heard before the debate that each would ask TWO questions of the others, and they told Edwards to ask a question of Obama and then Hillary. But after asking Obama about lobbyist money, Edwards was not allowed to ask Hillary anything. I sure would have loved to hear Hillary's "lobbyists are people just like you and me" answer again. Obama was kinda cheated out of his question.

WE MUST NOT HAVE A REAL DEBATE.

how does he expect to drum anyone out of Decision08® without the tough questions he asked Kucinich?

(Russert/Williams/Others) to the ears of an ignorant/inattentive public. You don't have to fool 'em all, just enough to make the stealing and lying effectively shift the balance of power to the corrupt.

Worst 7 years of my life...............being a throttled witness to this * regime.

NoFederales