What is the role of the moderator in a debate? Is it to ask questions, queue the rebuttals, and stop the candidates from speaking beyond the time limits? Or do moderators have a deeper responsibility to the democratic process?
"Every debate needs a moderator," says the
League of Women Voters website. "Although the role varies greatly with the format, at a minimum the moderator, as representative of the sponsor, enforces the rules and introduces the proceedings and the participants."
The League of Women Voters used to sponsor debates, but lost control of the debates in 1986 to the private, not-for-profit corporation known as the Commission on Presidential Debates. CPD was founded by the former heads of the Democratic and Republican parties.
The debates are sponsored by corporations that include American Airlines and Anheuser-Busch.
Should journalists like Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill cooperate with an organization -- the CPD -- that
a federal court recently accused of engaging in partisan political activities? The U.S. District Court called for the Federal Elections Commission to investigate the CPD's practice of excluding minor parties from the debates.
Lehrer and Ifill work for the Public Broadcasting Service, another private, not-for-profit corporation that receives almost 35 percent of its funding from taxpayer dollars. State governments contribute 18.3 percent of its $1.6 billion annual budget, and federal grants and contracts contribute 16.4 percent. Should the PBS moderators have different standards for moderating presidential debates because they, more than most journalists, represent taxpayers?
Regarding debate rules, should journalists sign the negotiated agreements between the parties? Does doing so compromise journalistic integrity, or at least the appearance of independence?
I wonder whether Jim Lehrer signed the 32-page memorandum of understanding between the two parties that set the parameters for the debate. When questioned about signing it, Lehrer responded "No comment." How can we expect a journalist to ask hard questions if he won't answer one?
What about Charles Gibson of ABC's "Good Morning America" (who will moderate Friday night's debate) and Ifill? Did they sign? Let's give Fox News some credit for saying publicly before the first debate that as the pool camera operation, it would not abide by the negotiated prohibition against showing candidate reactions.
"It is the moderator's responsibility to ensure that all the candidates have an equal opportunity to speak to each issue," says the League of Women Voters. Who, then, are all the candidates? Are they only the Democrats and Republicans? Or do we call a candidate anyone with a mathematical chance of winning the presidency -- i.e. being on enough state ballots to garner sufficient electoral votes to capture the election?
Four other candidates exist who fit that second definition -- Libertarian Michael Badnarik is on 49 state ballots, Constitutionalist Michael Peroutka is on 37 state ballots, independent Ralph Nader (disclosure -- I work for Ralph Nader's campaign as youth coordinator) is on 36 state ballots, and Green David Cobb is on 28. So why were they not included in the debates?
The Commission on Presidential Debates monopolizes the scope of political debates that the American public can see by setting unrealistic standards for participation in the televised debates. It requires that any candidate be polling at 15 percent in all five national media polls, which creates a chicken-and-egg question of attracting media attention and polls.
If journalists don't call for third party participation, who will? A recent Zogby poll found 57 percent of Americans wanted to see at least Ralph Nader in the debates. Is it the duty of Lehrer and Ifill and the other moderators to ask Dick Cheney or John Kerry whether they believe third parties belong in the debate?
Can we expect more from Gibson during Friday night's Town Hall-style debate on domestic issues? With the questions already written by the citizens who will attend the debate, and citizens not allowed to diverge from their approved, pre-scripted query, what role will Gibson fill aside from that of a journalistic presence to give credibility to the procedure?
Many in the international press corps have accused their American counterparts of sanitizing the Iraq war and of not holding the administration's feet to the fire by asking difficult questions. During this contentious political season, we need journalists from the U.S. to show the world that they are not afraid to hold the powerful accountable, and that they, too, are interested in free and open elections for all.
