Broken News by Chris Stirewalt

Author:Chris Stirewalt [STIREWALT, CHRIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2022-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Of all the kinds of work I have done in journalism, presidential debates have been among the most fun and satisfying. In the 2012 and 2016 cycles, I got to help put together multiple debates for Fox News. They were all on the Republican side, but not for lack of trying. So much cajoling, pleading, and meeting with Democratic candidates and party officials in both cycles led to naught.

I understand why it would have been against the perceived self-interest of the Democratic candidates to participate. The way debates worked prior to the 2020 cycle was that networks and their partners—a newspaper, a college, etc.—would run the events on their own. That meant obtaining commitments from the front-runners, knowing that the rest of the candidates would show up for the chance to take shots at the leaders of the pack. Or it could go the other way: Get enough other candidates to participate so that the front-runners, who usually perceive debates as undesirable risks, have to participate or else look like chickens. In 2012, the last presidential election of the old regime, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney shunned the debate stage for months as other candidates jumped into the spotlight. While Romney was raising money, candidates like Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich were chomping the scenery in debates. Nine, nine, nine, y’all.

Our debate team was, in my obviously biased opinion, the best in the business. But even Fox’s toughest critics on the left would have allowed that Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace were tough, fair moderators. We spent weeks researching, refining, and gaming out the questions under Bill Sammon’s leadership. Each question had to be factually accurate, germane, and aimed at helping primary voters make a better decision about their choice. The goal was always to avoid cheap-shot “gotcha” questions.

But by 2020, the old conventions had already broken down. Rather than debates hosted by journalists, Democrats were looking for safer spaces for their candidates. The Democratic National Committee stepped in to arrange debates itself. In 2016, Republicans had decided to punish candidates who participated in debates unsanctioned by the party. But in the next cycle, Democrats took the next step of becoming television producers.

This was bad news for the press, but also for the party. Yes, they got opinion hosts like Rachel Maddow and Don Lemon as questioners instead of just news anchors and reporters. That’s fun for the party faithful at home, but misses the point of debates.

Instead of questions that will reveal candidates’ qualities in a general election contest as well as their positions on the issues that matter to party members, they get either softballs about how rotten the other side is or niche questions that invite pandering to base voters. In debate after debate in 2020, the questioners tilted the stage toward Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in part because that’s what the hosts’ fans would have wanted. That pushed the whole field toward answers that would be liabilities in the fall.

But there’s more at work here, too.

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