Media Censorship dogs Democratic, Republican Debates
by Mark MacGillivray
In a move that mirrors the exclusion of the Green Party from Leadership Debates in Canada, MSNBC in the United States made a last-minute change in its Las Vegas Democrat Debate format to exclude candidate Dennis Kucinich, noted for his opposition to nuclear power and the War in Iraq.
Initially, MSNBC had planned on holding the debate with the top four Democratic candidates, but when candidate Bill Richardson dropped out of the race, they changed their format to include only 3 top candidates.
The Kucinich campaign took MSNBC to court, arguing, “The exclusion of Kucinich undermines the purposes of the Federal Communications Act and is a blatant violation of the Act because of the media’s obligation to operate in the public interest… NBC revised its criteria to specifically exclude the diverse and anti-war voice of Kucinich and his grass-roots supporters.” The lawsuit went on to say, “The debate is not a true presidential primary debate without including all credible candidates, but instead is effectively an endorsement of the candidates selected by NBC.”
NBC, who incidentally is owned by General Electric, claimed: “Mr. Kucinich’s claim is nothing more than an illegitimate private cause of action designed to impose an equal access requirement that entirely undermines the wide journalistic freedoms enjoyed by news organizations under the First Amendment.” Attorneys for NBC also argued, “A television station does not have to grant unlimited access to a candidate debate. If anyone’s First Amendment rights are being infringed, they are MSNBC’s.”
But, thanks to the internet and the efforts of Democracy Now!, we can get a measure of the man who was excluded.
The most serious allegation Kucinich makes is …
…that the election is subject to undue corporate influence.
“So we’ve—you know, we’re in a conundrum here about what the public’s rights are, because this goes far beyond my humble candidacy. It goes right to the question of democratic governance, whether a broadcast network can choose who the candidates will be based on their narrow concerns, because they’ve contributed—GE, NBC and Raytheon, another one of GE’s property, have all contributed substantially to Democratic candidates who were in the debate. And the fact of the matter is, with GE building nuclear power plants, they have a vested interest in Yucca Mountain in Nevada being kept open; with GE being involved with Raytheon, another defense contractor, they have an interest in war continuing. So NBC ends up being their propaganda arm to be able to advance their economic interests.” (Italics added)
The exclusion mirrors the exclusion of Republican candidate Ron Paul from the debates on FoxNews. In an interview with the Alex Jones Show on January 4, Ron Paul said, “People are outraged and a lot of them are coming to our defense including the Republican Party up there so we haven’t heard the last word about that yet.”
Paul also stated that the reason he believes he was being excluded from the debates is his stance against the war in Iraq.
While this has been a dark day for freedom and democracy in the United States, I wouldn’t want to characterize this behavior of these news outlets as something new, nor is it something that NBC necessarily denies:
January 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Here is the final quote by Kucinich which clarifies the larger issue:
“Well, you know, I think there’s a real question about why Senators Clinton and Edwards didn’t say anything about the exclusion. Senator Obama did make a statement.
And furthermore, if, as MSNBC maintained in court, this is a private matter, here you have Democratic presidential candidates participating in a, quote, “private debate” where the public interest could be ransacked, because General Electric is involved in all kinds of interests that are quite diverse from the public interest.
So this then becomes a much larger question—much larger than, you know, my candidacy—about who’s structuring these debates? In whose interests are they being conducted? What about the questions, the way they’re framed? Why are they continuing to promote war? Why are these defense contractors involved, as in General Electric’s case? And GE owns Raytheon, GE owns NBC. Defense contracting goes up as war continues. “
January 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am
It’s sad but not surprising.
The public political climate and the views of some of the big corporate interests in the US are still quite pro-war, or at least wanting to appear very patriotic. Kucinich is hardly a force to be reckoned with, very low numbers in the primaries so far, so that’s why it is easier to attempt to shut him out of these formatted debates.
Same with the lack of coverage on Ron Paul, except they have started to take him more seriously…even the CNN has started playing clips of him speaking and giving a bit more exposure to his views.
I think the theme is similar to the David Orchard’s attempt to take leadership of the old PC party. Different country, different political timing, same basic motive. Kucinich and Paul are the de facto independents in their respective partisan camps. If there were a third major party in the States, they would not be competing to become the Democratic and Republican nominees, they’d be running their own shows.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Living in Canada, it would be great if the US could get out of the Iraq quagmire and focus on building its economy and reinvesting in its infrastructure. Because our economies are so closely aligned, we Canadians may suffer the US folly.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 am
Indeed…the US is reliving its Vietnam war days, albeit on a smaller scale.
But the impact is similar.
I think that the next election is the Democrats’ “to loose”…they’d have to screw up incredibly bad in order to not take the presidency.