Letters to the Editor
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Get it right Shapiro: Gibson and Stephanopoulos were devoid of substance and rife with gotcha politics
I'm so tired of the individuals who decide on content of news - editors, reporters, producers, presenters, pundits - hiding from their responsibility with the impersonal term "the media".
Under this generalized term they act like their own knowing actions and choices are some detached mass akin to the weather. They blame the behavior of the public, the candidates or the market for what they do on their own.
If the debate was "devoid of substance and rife with gotcha politics" we have the names of who chose this: Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos and their staffs. They asked the questions, they directed the focus.
While the candidates might have done more to push back, it's a lot harder to combat the frame which others place around you. They were probably hampered by the risk of being demonized by those setting the frame.
And now Walter Shapiro mostly give a pass to Gibson and Stephanopoulos and continues to dwell on the substanceless and gotcha material.
If he was really so bothered by it, he could do some actual reporting on the candidates real policies and positions. But that would require moving past the flaccid standards of commentary.
It's easier to perpetuate the scam of And Wednesday night, the Philadelphia finale flunked by whining about "drama" and "intellectual nourishment" than renouncing the former and providing the latter.
It's time to stop turning the guns on Clinton/Obama and start facing the media powerful.
Salon should be ashamed to print excerpts from Glenn Greenwald's book while being a prime example of the problem he dissects.