ABC‘s David Muir and Martha Raddatz, questioning Democrats on behalf of the 36 percent of Americans who agree with Donald Trump.
The Democratic and Republican presidential debates have this asymmetry: Republican candidates are presumed to need ideological sympathizers among their questioners—Fox News, for example, or Salem Media, which teams up with CNN for GOP debates—while Democrats are thought content to be quizzed by representatives of mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN, CBS and ABC (FAIR Action Alert, 10/9/15).
This set-up resulted, on the Republican side, in the spectacle of Salem Media’s Hugh Hewitt (12/15/15) pressing GOP contender Ben Carson to declare his willingness to “kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands.” (Carson’s response: “You got it. You got it.”)
And on the Democratic side, the result is debates like the kind we got on December 19.
Although primary debates are ostensibly intended to help members of each major party select their nominee, the questions asked by the debate moderators from ABC—World News Tonight anchor David Muir and national security correspondent Martha Raddatz —consistently posed questions from the right.
As when Raddatz pressed Hillary Clinton: “Our latest poll shows that more Americans believe arming people, not stricter gun laws, is the best defense against terrorism. Are they wrong?” Or when she pushed Bernie Sanders on “sending US combat troops to join a coalition to fight ISIS.”
She asked a couple of questions “about a new terrorist tool used in the Paris attacks, encryption”—even though, as The Intercept’s Dan Froomkin (11/18/15) reported, evidence “suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted.” Still, Raddatz was able to use the dubious encryption claims to push Clinton to “force [Apple] to give law enforcement a key to encrypted technology by making it law.”
As for Muir, he sought an endorsement of racial profiling from Sanders, citing “a neighbor in San Bernardino who reportedly witnessed packages being delivered to [mass killers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik]’s home, that it set off red flags, but they didn’t report it because they were afraid to profile.” He also pushed Clinton and Martin O’Malley to endorse “the idea of a halt or a pause” in acceptance of Syrian refugees, and challenged Clinton to explain what was wrong with Donald Trump’s “proposed ban on Muslims coming to America,” given that “36 percent of Americans, more than a third, agree with him.”
What about the concerns of the nearly two-thirds of Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump? Progressive perspectives on security and foreign policy were hard to discern in ABC’s questioning. As with the prior Republican debate (FAIR Blog, 12/16/15), “terrorism” was treated as if it meant “political violence by Muslims,” with right-wing mass killings like the Charleston church massacre and the assault on Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs going unmentioned.
The drone war was ignored by ABC’s moderators, as were civilian casualties. The disastrous consequences of the Libyan intervention that Clinton advocated for was brought up at one point, but the premise of the question was that Clinton “should have done more to fill the leadership vacuum left behind”—not that the secretary of State shouldn’t call for military force to overthrow governments she dislikes.
Even though the world’s leaders had reached a landmark climate change agreement just a week before the debate, “climate change” and “global warming” didn’t pass Muir’s or Raddatz’s lips.
ABC News’ approach to domestic issues was not much different. Raddatz pressed Sanders on the cost of a single-payer healthcare plan–“Can you tell us specifically how much people will be expected to pay?”—and on his plan to make public colleges tuition-free: “How does that really lower the cost other than just shifting the cost to taxpayers?” She tried to get Clinton and O’Malley to promise not to raise taxes on households making $250,000 a year—in other words, families who make more than 97 percent of the country.
Muir asked all three candidates a question about Black Lives Matter—but he focused on the “so-called Ferguson effect, police holding back because they’re afraid of backlash.” Voters who are worried about “a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement” were represented by ABC News—but those who are more worried about police officers killing unarmed African-Americans with impunity were out of luck.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
You can send feedback to ABC News here (or send messages on Twitter: @ABCPolitics. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
The USA will not survive the fraud today.
USA voters blindly go to the rigging system today which it calls “US Election 2016”.
It’s been 28 years since the League of Women’s Voters resigned from managing the national debates and were strong-armed to hand it off to corporatocracy – the capitalist rulers and corporate media bosses are thugs.
In those 28 years the USA has devolved to the dangerous (evil as most describe) ballot choice the people have today.
Had the independent LWV been conducting debates in the past three decades the climate would not incubate the Hilary Clinton we see today or envision tomorrow. It would not fester a Donald Trump on to the world stage. And, a Jill Stein and other candidates of realistic and honest caliber would be affecting the public discourse and policy on stage about sustainability.
Back in 1988
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NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 3, 1988
LEAGUE REFUSES TO “HELP PERPETRATE A FRAUD”
WITHDRAWS SUPPORT FROM FINAL PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
WASHINGTON, DC —”The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,” League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.
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The fallacy in your viewpoint is that the two parties are not equal.
They both have elements of the same problems, corruption, mis-
representation, etc … but the Republicans push Supreme Court
justices like Scalia that want to reverse history. So far the Democrats
do not. Republicans want to obstruct government.
You cannot just blame government … government has not worked
as business and monopolies have taken it over and locked the
people out. This has been mostly the trend of Republicans since
just after FDR, and as they have gained control all of these issues
have gotten worse.
But the same thing that worked to take over the Republican party
has been used to inflitrate the Democrats … money, and that is mostly
who and what runs the Republican party. Money, lobbyists, they
write the bills, they own the media.
… that wouldn’t be the Supreme Court that appointed the USA President in 2000 outside the poll results and in anticipation of 9-11 (one would think), the court that passed Citizens United to further mock democratic elections, and that court that otherwise pontificates on what it considers secondary issues that do not interfere with their primary function : development of the Globalized capital consumer and war machine –
– that Supreme Court?
If one is content thinking that the court’s decisions on gay rights and other such seeming advances are paramount, but at the same time the US Constitution, democracy and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights are wholesale-ly trashed without prejudice, across all demographic for Trans-corporate interest, then I recommend considering how the smaller inner-cogs within the larger cog is crushing our means and rights indiscriminately.
This is regardless of the type of insane and fascist victor on offer today – CLINTON or TRUMP.
Yes, a Trump influenced court reversing valued inner-cog law would be rough on women, gays, blacks, immigrants and artists but the backlash may hopefully ignite a revolution…. ha! well, somewhere on Earth maybe.
I doubt an effective street movement could ever happen in the USA since drugs, addictions, crime, poverty, consumer seduction, homelessness, anti-education, television and corporate fake news make for a population of disturbed eunuchs.
A collapse is eminent.
btw, the fallacy in your viewpoint is that Trump is a Republican or subservant there
It does seem to be kind of true that Republicans because they
have a large number of extremely obnoxious members, and they
carry guns, and they behave obnoxiously arrogant and entitled,
tend to push everyone to conform to their impolite and usually
bullying agenda. They have gotten to take on the “adult” role for
so long that we have not questioned it. However, in the last
year I think we all see that Republicans have pushed their “act”
way to far and especially we see the troup of clowns they offered
to us, and especially the one they picked to lead the party.
HAHAHA … the Republican Party has finally told us who they
are and that they stand for nothing but lying, scheming, insulting,
bullying and denying … all the way to the bank with money the
rest of us have paid for.
I can just hope that Americans can remember this in 2, 4, 6, 8
and every other election year – and that they can hold the
Democrats feet to the fire as well. We are all sick of it, but we
Democrats know how the system is supposed to work, once
we can get the sand, grime and dirt out of the machine … uh,
I mean Republicans.
BruceK you are a deluded patriot if you hold to the reform of the Democratic Party to save the flag and the republic for which it stands.
It’s over.
No easy way of saying it.