FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
With a show of solemnity yesterday, the Commission on Presidential Debates carried through its vow to exclude all minor-party candidates from the nationally televised debates. Protests against the Commission and its plans for restricted debates are expected to grow, including at the site of the first debate in Boston, Oct. 3. Established by the two […]
We are media critics and commentators who are rarely unanimous in our opinions. Yet we are united in our belief that voters would be better served by broader debates than those sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. We believe that the American people should have, at the very least, one nationally televised opportunity to […]
Vice President Al Gore told reporters during a conference call Sunday that he had not “ruled out” the possibility of including Ralph Nader or other third party candidates in the upcoming presidential debates. Gore said he believed the deadline for expanding the field in the debates had not yet passed, although the first debate was […]
Had Jesse Ventura or Ross Perot been required to poll at 15 percent when running for office, they would not have been able to debate their contenders. This is one of the arguments put forward in a letter calling for open presidential debates this fall, sent today to the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) by […]
Larry King: Governor Cuomo, should Nader and Buchanan be allowed into the debates?— Mario Cuomo: Oh, I was asked about that this morning and I said, “Yes, why not?” Why not proliferate the views? It would be a better debate with the four of them in, I think. And if you’re complaining that, well, there’s […]
Likely voters agree that third party candidates should participate in the debates, but should be limited to those with higher profiles, a recent Zogby poll shows. The nationwide survey of 1,005 likely voters reveals that a great deal of support is shown for Green Party’s Ralph Nader (news – web sites) (60.9% to 29.0%) and […]
A previous FAIR action alert (8/25/00) called on citizens to urge the Commission on Presidential Debates to include viable third-party presidential candidates. Now, media activists and pro-democracy advocates need to speak out promptly in the wake of George W. Bush’s recent offer to debate Al Gore three times: — on an NBC “Meet the Press” […]
Inclusive Debates are Good for Democracy Recent history shows that participation by third-party candidates raises interest, debate viewership and voter turnout. The 1992 presidential debates included Ross Perot and were watched by record-breaking TV audiences, averaging 90 million viewers, with a larger audience for each successive debate. Presidential voter turnout went up in ’92, reversing […]
As the debate over debates heats up, the Bush campaign is balking at participation in the events proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Bush’s concerns revolve around format and venues. But few journalists covering this story have looked into the legitimate questions about the Commission, especially whether the CPD is independent enough to decide […]
You walk into an election booth in November to vote for a well-known, respected candidate who’s vigorously campaigning for president, but the candidate’s name has been excluded from the ballot. Is the election rigged? You’d probably ask the same question if you tuned into the presidential debates on TV and the candidate you planned to […]
Early coverage of the upcoming protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions has followed a familiar pattern: Mainstream media are stoking fears about the potential for violence in Philadelphia and Los Angeles by rewriting the actual history of police brutality at last year’s anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In its place, media are developing a […]
FAIR’s June 22 action alert, “Nader Left Out of Media Websites,” generated well over a thousand activist letters to mainstream news websites, urging them to include Ralph Nader, the leading third party presidential candidate,in their election coverage. Since then, many of the sites FAIR named in its alert have changed some of their election pages […]
NOTE: Since this alert was written, Nader has been added to the New York Times and MSNBC websites. He is also now on the CBS “Follow the Dollar” page. CNN and Time have made no changes as of 6/27/00. According to recent political polls, the Green Party’s Ralph Nader is now the leading third party […]
Refusing to let the Republican and Democratic campaigns dictate the terms of the 1988 debates, the League of Women Voters felt compelled to cease cooperating with the Commission on Presidential Debates in presenting that year’s debates. The CPD has maintained complete control ever since. The League explained its decision in an Oct. 3, 1988 news […]
At a February 1997 Harvard Institute of Politics panel looking back at the 1996 election, top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos discussed his campaign’s negotiations with the Commission on Presidential Debates and the Bob Dole campaign. STEPHANOLOPOLOUS: “[The Dole campaign] didn’t have leverage going into negotiations. They were behind. They needed to make sure Perot wasn’t […]
A revealing national poll of likely voters, released on April 10, found Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in third place behind George W. Bush and Al Gore — and ahead of prospective Reform candidate Pat Buchanan. So which alternative-party aspirant appeared all over national TV the next night? It wasn’t Nader. Asked to give his […]
I. Introduction The Appleseed Citizens’ Task Force on Fair Debates is a project of the Appleseed Electoral Reform Project at American University Washington College of Law. The Appleseed Project addresses the rising dominance of private wealth and corporate soft money in our elections and the corresponding decline in the quantity and quality of political participation […]
In the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, George W. Bush has deployed the traditional big guns of the party establishment and carpet-bombing TV ad campaigns. Yet he’s been unable to subdue John McCain, whose mobile, guerrilla operation is bolstered by a merry band of fellow travelers in the press. Imagine that in a roomful […]
On January 6, the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) announced the criteria that presidential candidates will have to meet in order to appear in next October’s nationally televised debates. As usual, to be included, a candidate must meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements, and must be on the ballot in enough states to have a […]
June 16, 1999, Carthage, Tennessee. Vice President Al Gore has just held his presidential campaign launch rally, and CNN goes live to on-scene reporter Jeanne Meserve, who begins: Bill, as you know, these political events are very carefully choreographed, and the Gore campaign cannot be happy about the fact that heckling broke out at the […]
