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ABC Defends Debate Questions

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“Tough but Appropriate,” Stephanopoulos Says

After an unusual backlash from both viewers and fellow journalists to the questioning of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, ABC News defended its performance, with one of the moderators, George Stephanopoulos, insisting, “We asked tough but appropriate questions.”

Some observers commended the ABC performance, but the negative reaction was widespread enough for ABC News to take note in its own debate story on Thursday’s “World Now,” which noted that the group MoveOn.org had begun a petition drive so that voters could express their outrage.

The Web site of the Nation magazine hosted a similar “open letter” from journalists and media analysts.

Moderators Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson “spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about — gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. And, channelling Karl Rove, they directed a video question to Barack Obama asking if he loves the American flag or not. Seriously,” MoveOn.org said on its Web site, which features a video compilation of some of the “gotcha” questions.

Obama — who bore the brunt of the sharp questioning during that first segment, sought to turn the grilling to his advantage on the campaign trail.

“He called Washington a town of ‘gotcha games,’ ‘anything goes’ and ‘slash-and-burn politics,’ “Shailagh Murray and Perry Bacon Jr. reported in the Washington Post. “Clinton, he said, ‘looked in her element’ on the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia as he grappled with uncomfortable questions.

“The crowd erupted. ‘That’s her right, to twist the knife a little bit,’ Obama continued. ‘That’s how our politics has been taught to be played.’ “

The Clintons were not complaining. “They’ve been beating up on her for 15 months,” former president Bill Clinton said in the ABC “World News” story. “I didn’t hear her whining when he said she was untruthful in Iowa or called her the senator from Punjab. This is a contact sport. If you don’t want to play, keep your uniform on.”

[Asked about the “whining” characterizations on the tarmac as he was about to get into his campaign SUV, Obama grinned and shook his head. “Who’s complaining?” he asked in return. “Who’s been complaining about the press for the last six months?,” NBC’s Aswini Anburajan reported.]

Murray and Bacon also reported that “in a conference call with reporters, top Clinton advisers encouraged reporters to continue to pursue some of the issues and questionable associations raised during the Wednesday face-off.” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said, “There is something good about candidates being asked to answer tough questions. It provides the public more information and insight. Certainly in the case of Sen. Obama, there has not been as much information being made available to the public. Last night was important and instructive,” Robin Abcarian reported in the Los Angeles Times.

In the New York Times on Friday, Jacques Steinberg explained, “The media post-mortem — which boiled over in more than 17,600 comments posted on the ABC Web site alone — also touched on questions that had long been simmering in the protracted Democratic campaign over the role of moderators in televised debates, to say nothing of political journalists generally.

“If there was a common theme, it was that Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos had front-loaded the debate with questions that many viewers said they considered irrelevant when measured against the faltering economy or the Iraq war, like why Senator Barack Obama did not wear an American flag pin on his lapel. Others rapped the journalists for dwelling on matters that had been picked over for weeks.”

In a series of interviews, Stephanopoulos defended his questioning and Gibson’s.

Michael Calderone wrote Thursday on Politico.com, “When I asked whether questions about flag pins or Bosnia are actually relevant to voters, he replied: ‘Absolutely.’

“‘The vote for the president,’ Stephanopoulos said, ‘is one of the most personal’ decisions that someone makes.

“‘When people make that choice, they take into account how candidates stand on the issues,’ he said, but also are concerned with ‘experience, character [and] credibility.’

“Stephanopoulos explained that since the candidates are not far apart policy-wise, the ‘core of the nomination fight’ has been about these issues.”

Stephanopoulos, who is ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, acknowledged to the Associated Press that it was legitimate to wonder about the order of the questions, and whether some of the more issue-oriented subjects brought up during the debate’s second half should have been sprinkled in earlier.

Responding to a concern raised by some, Jeffrey W. Schneider, senior vice president for ABC News, said ABC did not regard the debate as a conflict of interest for Stephanopoulos, who had been a press aide to Bill Clinton, Michael D. Schaffer reported Friday in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s been here 11½ years, far longer than the time he spent in the White House,” Schneider said.

Although the Web site Think Progress provided audio of a radio conversation between Stephanopoulos and Fox News’ Sean Hannity in which Hannity suggested questions about Obama’s relationship with former Weather Underground member William Ayers, Stephanopoulos told interviewers, including the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, he had been following the issue since the Politico reported it in February. “What finally tipped the balance on whether to ask it or not was that as far as we could tell, Obama had never answered the question,” Stephanopoulos said.

For some critics, the reputation of mainstream television journalists took more of a beating than Obama.

“Charlie…could you be any more out of touch with your viewers? Most people aren’t millionaires like you, and if Pennsylvanians are losing sleep over economic matters, it is not over whether the capital gains tax will go back up again,” Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch wrote in an “open letter.”

“You disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes.”

On the progressive-leaning Huffington Post, Bob Cesca wrote Friday, “Here we had two members of the very serious traditional media going after two Democrats in ways which they have never challenged members of the Bush administration — despite the Bush Republican record of disaster after disaster after disaster. In fact, George and Charlie made the FOX News Channel debates, with all of their ‘Love American Style’ graphics and fire alarms and wacky fart sound effects, look like the goddamn Continental Congress.”

The Capital Times in Madison, Wis., said in an editorial, “the Democratic contenders sounded as if they were reading outtakes from a particularly lame Bill O’Reilly program. . . . the questions from viewers appeared to have been selected from people who may be spending just a little too much time listening to Rush Limbaugh.”

“Flag pins? Jeremiah Wright? Bosnia?” Marc Lamont Hill wrote on theRoot.com. “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that the debate was moderated by Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter.”

Despite the outcry, there was good news for ABC:

“The prime-time debate from Philadelphia on Wednesday was seen by 10.7 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. That’s the most of any debate this election cycle,” the AP’s David Bauder wrote on Thursday.

There was mixed news for Obama.

The latest Associated Press-Yahoo poll, released Friday, said of Clinton, “the New York senator’s ratings for being honest, likable, ethical and refreshing have fallen since January, and Obama scores higher than she does in all those categories, the AP’s Charles Babington and Trevor Tompson reported. And, “In a dramatic reversal, the AP-Yahoo News poll found that a clear majority of Democratic voters now say Obama has the better chance of defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in November.”

However, “Gallup’s pollsters, who have been running daily tracking surveys of more than 1,000 voters a day, say they found the day after the televised debate from Philadelphia — for the first time in a while — more Democrats nationally voicing support for Sen. Hillary Clinton than for Barack Obama,” Mark Silva reported Friday on the Chicago Tribune blog, “The Swamp.”

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Obama Leads in Endorsements from Pa. Papers

Sen. Barack Obama appears to be far ahead of Sen. Hillary Clinton in endorsements from Pennsylvania’s newspapers, despite the dustup over his remarks about bitterness among small-town Pennsylvanians.

“Obama’s bluntness probably didn’t win him many new friends — but the early read from the Keystone State is that voters see the flap as more right than wrong, columnist Errol Louis wrote on Monday in the New York Daily News.

“Two days after Obama’s comments became public, he was endorsed by the Allentown Morning Call, the main paper serving the troubled Lehigh Valley. It’s exactly the kind of area Obama was talking about.

“Farther west, despite Clinton’s deep roots in Scranton — her family has been there since the 1880s — the Scranton Times[-]Tribune endorsed Obama, too. Two days after the ‘bitter’ flap broke.”

Moreover, Obama has the support of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Bucks County Courier Times and the Harrisburg Patriot-News, all but the Inquirer’s coming this week, after the “bitter” flap arose. The Inquirer made its endorsement on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday.

Clinton was endorsed on Friday by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania.

Louis’ conclusion? “Obama still isn’t expected to win Pennsylvania, but finishing a close second will prove that voters, despite the media hoopla, are more interested in fixing their communities and their country — and, yes, their hearts — than they are in being sold another bill of goods about the prosperity that remains so stubbornly out of reach.”

[Added April 19: The Obama campaign has created a campaign ad using the newspaper endorsements.]

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Seattle Times Losing 6 of Color in Newsroom

 

The Seattle Times is losing six newsroom employees of color as a result of buyouts and layoffs, Executive Editor David Boardman told Journal-isms on Friday, saying he was “very proud of the way this went. Diversity was front and center for me as I tried to maneuver my way through staff reductions.”

In all, there were 34 newsroom layoffs. Because of the number of white newsroom employees leaving, the percentage of people of color is actually increasing, Boardman said. In the latest diversity census of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, released on Sunday, the Times reported 22.2 percent journalists of color, with 12 percent of the journalists Asian Americans.

The departing newsroom employees of color are Karen Johnson, a “news resident,” or someone on an extended internship; Rachel Dooley, a news assistant; reporters Paula Bok and Florangela Davila; page designer Ted Basladynksi and Lee Moriwaki, associate editorial page editor.

The Seattle Times Co., reeling from continued declines in advertising revenue, announced on April 7 it would slice its flagship newspaper’s overall staff by nearly 200 and make other cuts aimed at saving $15 million, the paper’s Eric Pryne reported then.

Boardman, who is a board member of ASNE, said he had told fellow board members that ASNE should sit down with the Newspaper Guild to explore how to protect diversity when cutbacks must be made. Guild contracts generally follow the “last hired, first fired” rule in implementing layoffs, which hurts people of color. He said there was support for the idea of a meeting but no concrete follow-up planned.

In a note to the staff, Boardman said the willingness of 19 people to accept buyouts “preserved the jobs of people with less seniority and whose Seattle Times careers are largely ahead of them.” He said the paper turned down four additional requests for buyouts.

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CNN en Español Reports on Blacks in Americas

CNN en Español began a series this month on blacks in the Americas, which will air each Thursday until July and reach areas of Latin America where it is rare to see dark-skinned Latinos on television.

The segments, in Spanish, run two to five minutes on “Directo,” a newscast that airs at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

Next Thursday’s segment, “The First Blacks in America,” about Panama, is produced by Panama correspondent Alexandra Ciniglio.

“Panama was the first place in the Western region’s mainland that had a Black settlement,” a description says. “Formerly, a part of Colombia until its independence in 1903, Panama is not always considered a Central American nation, historically at least. The first Blacks arrived around 1513 as explorers who built vessels; the next batch arrived a few years later as slaves who transported goods from ships and to work on gold mines. The first African slave rebellion in the Americas took place in Panama as they overpowered the slavemasters and received help from the AmerIndians. These people were called ‘cimmarones’ (the wild ones) but are now known as ‘Playeros’ (the beach people).”

The series began April 3, with CNN’s coverage of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Other segments focus on Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina and Mexico.

CNN began an on-air and digital initiative this month, “CNN Presents: Black in America,” that airs over four months. It “features six hours of documentaries, a weekly series of reports that will air on CNN/U.S. and CNN International and appear as part of a multimedia online effort,” CNN announced.

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Short Takes

 

Howard Witt

 

 
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