There’s a long tradition of news organizations, national and local, sometimes together, sponsoring presidential and other candidate debates. The organizations and the panelists have been the objects of a lot of advice and even pressure as to how these debates should be conducted and what questions should be asked. This pressure has been successfully resisted, but it’s being tried again this year with the added wrinkle that candidates are being asked to boycott debates because certain groups wants to approve the sponsoring organizations. This pressure must be resisted as it has been in the past. Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists. And any candidate of either party who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.
There’s also a tradition that a news organization doesn’t issue talking points that mimic a political party’s talking points. Fox doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.
The reality is there is no reason for Democrats to go on Fox News. It is a right wing propaganda machine with news coverage dictated by ideological concerns. What good is it for a Democrat to go on there? So they can have these jokes made:
And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’
Hysterical given Fox News never retracted nor apologized for the ‘madrassa story’.