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Dumbing Down Democracy: CNN Thinks You Are An Idiot
Debating for Dummies
by Eric Alterman I've seen debates on TV before, of course, and attended them from journalists' pens and spin rooms. But sitting in the audience of CNN's November 15 Democratic presidential debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focused my mind on the egregious manner in which our media dumb down the process by which we pick our Presidents.
It was less a debate than a two-hour advertisement; not only did viewers see CNN = Politics graphics everywhere but unbeknownst to the television audience a network producer ran around the stage, ginning up the crowd like a high school cheerleader.
(This backfired when a group of rowdies -- angered by the inanity of the questions -- shouted down Wolf Blitzer and had to be removed from the auditorium.)
At the Democratic debate in Las Vegas on November 15, CNN Anchors
Wolf Blitzer and Suzanne Malvaux twisted legitimate questions into
"gotcha" traps, and asked questions of no matter for a president -- or
for choosing a president. There has to be a better way.
From the start it was obvious that Blitzer & Co. had little
interest in illuminating the candidates' positions on actual issues;
they sought merely to create controversy. The first part of the debate
was given over to attacks on, and counterattacks from, Hillary Clinton
-- a surefire newsmaker that left the other candidates twiddling their
thumbs. Next Blitzer went down the line, demanding to know whether the
candidates supported driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants,
apparently unaware that licenses are the province of governors and
state legislators, not Presidents. When Barack Obama tried to outline
his overall approach to immigration in response, Blitzer repeatedly cut
him off. ("Is that a yes or a no?" was a typical Blitzer interruption.)
Blitzer
also demanded an up-or-down answer from members of the panel on the
question of merit pay for teachers, another issue for which the
Constitution gives the President no role whatsoever. What's more,
Blitzer's reductive formulation -- "What if there's an excellent
teacher in that team and a crummy teacher?" -- failed to define who
would make the decision, what criteria would be used and how they might
be implemented. This turned out to be the moderator's modus operandi.
Discussing the future of Pakistan, for instance, Blitzer reduced the
question to the purely theoretical and profoundly misleading "Is human
rights more important than American national security?" -- as if the
two were somehow contradictory by definition and either answer might
plot out a plan in Pakistan.
As is so often the case in MSM
election coverage, CNN's hectoring of the Democratic candidates
reflected an unconscious internalization of Republican Party talking
points. As Michael Kinsley pointed out during the 2004 Democratic
convention, "It's true enough that this is a moment when the Democrats
are called upon to reject extreme liberalism (whatever that might be)
and to embrace moderation. But that is only because every moment is
such a moment." He termed this meme "one of the very safest in all of
punditry," which, as the old song goes, is really saying something. So
we heard Blitzer robotically repeating, "The teachers' union, very
powerful -- teachers' unions, very powerful" before inquiring of Dennis
Kucinich, "Are there any issues with unions -- teachers' unions, or
other unions for that matter -- with which you disagree?" (Leave aside
the fact that Blitzer apparently believes that all unions agree with
one another on everything; are Republican candidates routinely asked to
disassociate themselves from conservative Christians or the Fortune
500?)
The same syndrome was evident when, after a woman in
the audience posed a question about what qualities the candidates would
seek in a Supreme Court Justice, Blitzer and Suzanne Malveaux
reinterpreted her question to restrict its scope to whether each would
"require" judges "to support abortion rights." Of course, the
questioner might have been interested in FISA, rendition, torture or
the Bush Administration's multi-pronged assault on our constitutional
rights, but where's the buzz factor there? Not only did CNN's anchors
deliberately distort the woman's question; they replaced it with one
posed within a hostile linguistic framework. Democrats, as we are all
aware, speak of the issue as one of "reproductive freedom," "choice"
or, as it is defined in Roe v. Wade, Americans' "right to privacy." The
way Blitzer rephrased Malveaux's original distortion -- demanding to
know whether the Democrats would "insist" that judicial nominees
"support abortion" -- he might as well have been addressing a
right-to-life rally.
We saw a similar dynamic every time
voters were invited to ask a question: Their concerns were ignored as
Blitzer and Malveaux twisted their inquiries into "gotcha" traps. When
an Arab-American asked an impassioned question about airport racial
profiling, Malveaux used his story to try to trip up John Edwards. "You
obviously voted for the Patriot Act, which gives the government
extended powers of surveillance," she explained. "What do you say to
people like Mr. Khan, who says he's been abused by that power?" Yet Mr.
Khan never mentioned the Patriot Act, which, as Joe Biden finally
noted, has nothing to do with racial profiling.
The night's
final absurdity came at the evening's close, when a UNLV student was
given the microphone and asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred
diamonds or pearls. Sitting in the audience, I was among those who
thought her idiotic inquiry shamed both herself and her university. Yet
it turns out I was being unfair. As she later explained on her MySpace
page, she had been planning to ask a question about nuclear waste
storage at Yucca Mountain, but at the last minute she was instructed by
a CNN producer to switch her question to diamonds and pearls, which she
had submitted in advance when asked by the network to provide questions
of a "lighthearted/fun" nature. The folks at CNN apparently considered
this inquiry to be such a stroke of genius they chose it as their lead
story for the website the following day, under the headline Diamonds or
pearls: Clinton wants both.
Really, Democrats, there has to be a better way.
Eric
Alterman is a regular columnist for The Nation magazine, and
Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University
of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of
Journalism.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark
Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong,Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and
Immanuel Wallerstein.
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Released: 23 November 2007
Word Count: 950
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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Writings 
I've seen debates on TV before, of course, and attended them from journalists' pens and spin rooms. But sitting in the audience of CNN's November 15 Democratic presidential debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focused my mind on the egregious manner in which our media dumb down the process by which we pick our Presidents.
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