Is Glenn Beck the next Ted Turner? Is he starting his own "CNN"?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

It was unfair to ask this question at a debate between candidates. A debate should be a debate. It is not a four-person press conference.

This was not a question posing a debatable topic of ideology or policy. How do you do this at a debate?

I guess we learn at the high school and college level how a "classic" debate takes place. What happened Thursday night obviously was NOT a classic, academic style debate. So what was it? It followed the design the political party has come up with. It is designed to showcase their policies and platform issues. It is designed to not let candidates skate through without getting their hair-do messed up. It is designed to gather the largest possible TV audience possible. The party wants exposure at its maximum possibility.

Your quarrel should not with with John King as moderator. He was simply playing the role the party placed on his shoulders. I would hope the "news industry" is having serious conversation about what their role should be in the future. Have the networks given up control of their journalistic integrity and put that task in the hands of the political parties?

John King was not functioning as a journalist. He was like the lion tamer at the circus. Snap the whip enough to make the lions roar and the little dogs jump through hoops and entertain the crowd.

Secondly, ABC had a lot of nerve doing this two days before a primary... not because it was potentially damaging information, but because this information is a) not news and b) not corroborated or refuted.

Even if what the former Mrs. Gingrich had to say were true, she told it time and again before to other journalists. This all ran in Esquire magazine a year ago, and the stories of Newt's wifey-drama were always public. He never refrained from discussing it.

It had no news value at all this time.

Yes, it does have news value at this time. When Newt was not a presidential candidate on the campaign trail, the story was just one more personal family drama playing out, which is true in millions of households. Ho, hum.

Suddenly he is an active, campaigning candidate for the party of "Family Values". We are days away from election day in the state that supposedly is the state most sensitive to the Family Values issues. The ex-Mrs. Gingrich is being courted by every media outlet in the country that wants an exclusive access to her story. Apparently she was in the driver's seat on determining when this story was going to be told HER WAY for once. You can say that is a shabby situation and ABC should have walked away. Which raises the following question: Is it text-book proper journalism to sit on your hands because the journalistic factors are slightly less than perfect, and let the story be handled primarily by the grocery-store tabloids or some secondary cable news network who will maybe corrupt all journalistic standards in handling the story?

As I said above: the debates have been structured by THE PARTY. The party needed to find out NOW how this messy part of Gingrich's life is going to play out with voters... not during the General Election when candidate Gingrich is facing candidate Obama. And if you are the party and you want to know how this issue is going to play, what better location for such a test than South Carolina?

 

[NewsStud]

Your quarrel should not with with John King as moderator. He was simply playing the role the party placed on his shoulders. I would hope the "news industry" is having serious conversation about what their role should be in the future. Have the networks given up control of their journalistic integrity and put that task in the hands of the political parties?.

My quarrel is with everybody. They've turned these debates into American Idol-esque press conference contests. I long for the debates that occur during the general election, produced by groups the like League of Women Voters, which are much more civilized and actually debates.

Yes, it does have news value at this time.

The ex-Mrs. Gingrich is being courted by every media outlet in the country that wants an exclusive access to her story.

No, it didn't. Just because it's the first time she spoke these claims on camera, doesn't make the information "new." She's been telling her story for years. And Newt appears to have been upfront and honest for decades about his family issues.

And if every news organization ash been courting her, as you say, seeking to rehash old news, shame on them. They are attempting to push public discourse in a certain direction instead of reporting on public discourse.

End result? Forgiving, compassionate Evangelical voters in S.C. were driven to feel sympathetic towards Gingrich, and felt that what both ABC and CNN did were low blows. Gingrich's win in S.C. was a decisive sweep, using a surge in support that didn't happen until "Wifegate" hit the news.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

My quarrel is with everybody. They've turned these debates into American Idol-esque press conference contests. I long for the debates that occur during the general election, produced by groups the like League of Women Voters, which are much more civilized and actually debates.

You and I are in agreement on what a proper presidential debate, (any political broadcast debate for that matter) should be like.

End result? Forgiving, compassionate Evangelical voters in S.C. were driven to feel sympathetic towards Gingrich, and felt that what both ABC and CNN did were low blows.

Maybe over the next week or two more details of the "back story" will surface. Hopefully some of that story will come from sources that you and I feel have some credibility and we will now more about assigning badges to the good guys and the bad guys in what was a very drastic and flamboyant event.

Evangelicals are admirably compassionate in some areas. When it comes to their national political involvement, my own view is that the term "compassionate Evangelical voters" is an oxymoron. That is one of the significant reasons why I crawled my way out of that encampment some 20 years ago. If the politically active Evangelicals are known for their compassion... why does it not show up in their view of Bill Clinton, of Jimmy Carter or Barak Obama? Why does it not cause them to have a softer approach to dealing with the Palestinians? Why does their compassion not cause them to with hold their applause and cheers when the current president is called "The Food Stamp President"?

It's a presidential election and truly compassionate people are lost somewhere down in the noise level. Presidential campaigns are noisy, rowdy and brutal and all kinds of groups will express themselves in ways between now and November in ways the cause some of us to moan and groan. Even people I agree with, candidates that I plan to vote for, will says things in the campaign and do things in the way of public demonstrations or the conduct of debates that strike me as less than civil, less than compassionate. We just have to keep reminding ourselves: It may be ugly at times.... but it is still the best system in the world at this time.