Thursday, November 29, 2007

That CNN debate controversy: update

Over at LITW, Jay scolds Republicans for crying foul when CNN chose questions from supposedly concerned and undecided voters asking questions via YouTube videos -- voters who are anything but undecided. (See the previous post.)

The current count is that at least 8 (out of 40) of the video questioners had varying degrees of allegiance or ties to Democratic presidential candidates.

And the blogger research and tally continues, so who knows where that tally will end up.

Jay's point? He approvingly quotes this from Melissa McEwan:

This was supposed to be a debate where the Republican candidates got asked questions by average people -- not necessarily Republican average people.

A good point on the surface, except that here is a quote (via RedState) from prior to the debate. David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief and the "mastermind behind the format" was noting that he had received questions from a couple of GOP campaigns who were concerned about the format. He had this to say:

Some of the Republican candidates don't trust us. They're not completely convinced that we're going to wean out the Democratic gotcha questions," Bohrman said. "But I've been very clear from the beginning: This will be a Republican debate, and the goal is to let Republican voters see their candidates."

Oops.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I rarely agree with Tim Rutten of the LA Times on anything, but I really thought Rutten nailed the problem with CNN's handling of the debate in this column:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-rutten1dec01,0,4122002.column?coll=la-home-center