Behind The Scenes In Last Night's Debate Spin Room: CNN and Fox Open Up On Debate Coverage Tactics

The following piece appears on GroundReport as well as OffTheBus.

GroundReport's Rachel Sterne went behind the scenes and into the spin room at Tuesday night's MSNBC debates to chat about debate techniques and success metrics.

Comments

[moriah5]

Great piece from behind the scenes!! I love it this stuff.

[USMC1980]

Russert was plain sad in last nights debate. Russert asked some of the dumbest, most loaded questions any amateur would know was inaapropriate. Most glaringly he asked Hillary Clinton and the other candidates to gauruntee that Iran wouldn't get nuclear weapons during their presidency, that's like asking a candidate to assure that there would be no crime in america under their presidency. No president can make a 100% prediction on what any foregin country will or won't do, will or won't accomplish, that's uimpossible for anyone to know. Russert was asking the candidates to have some sort of psychic powers...he might as well ahve asked them to do a tarot reading on national television. Russert knows better, there is nothing wrong with tuff questions, but the questions have to be fair. Russert either knows that, or he shouldn't be moderating.

PS. It's a shame Russert doesen't ask these kinds of questions to the GOP candidates who come on his show, I guess he is too busy sniffing thier butts.

[godlessclif]

The questions from citizens is a scam.
If you ever worked at a radio station and I did for a while as an engineer, you know the call in requests are fake.
You have a list of 100 songs on tape including the top 40 and 60 tunes the station is plugging. If you call in asking for anything else it does not get played.

You know people were dying to ask about impeachment, the war, Islam, the bill of rights, NAFTA-CAFTA and Globalism but those topic were off the table even if a million people called in to ask.

The VRWC-DLC controls the media.

[capetowndissentator]

So it was made pretty clear in this video that Carl Cameron is a bit of a hack. As one of the voters that he refers to, I do not want to see potential future presidents battle it out like race cars.

I would also fault the HuffingtonPost as well for it's headlines concerning last night's Democratic Debate. Cameron is right to a degree, however, it is a "race", in which one candidate tries to outdistance him or herself from the others. But, to extend the metaphor to its limit, races don't usually include kicking the legs of the other competitors.

I don't particularly care about the narrative of political campaigning: will Obama hit hard against Clinton?; did Edwards show more strength? In all honesty, I was thoroughly impressed with Senators Dodd and Biden who chose to educate the voters about the issues rather than produce sound bites or obfuscate criticism, the way that Senator Clinton did.

We should be examining the substance of what these candidates are saying and not the soundbites. If we wanted to see a race where people were pushing and shoving each other, then Rollerderby would still be on tv.

[KeysDan]

Maybe they should have included a discussion and analysis of the interviewers techniques. Mr. Russert did not come off well in his questioning of Mrs. Clinton and the question about UFO's to Rep. Dennis Kucinich seemed gauged to make him look like a kook whose positions must be suspect owing to mental disorder. Mr. Kucinich integrated into several responses the need for impeachment of both the President and Vice President. Mr. Kucinich is a sitting member of the House of Representatives and has introduced a bill along these lines, so it has a level of seriousness. It would seem, by most accounts, to be a pretty strong statement, but neither interviewer pursued it with him, nor did they ask for comments or responses from any of the other candidates.