What is most amazing to me was that there was not one reported moment. No one interviewing people. No voice of the people. Just the big mouths, yelling at each other. It was to me just a continued extension of the ABC News debate where political trivia, sleaze and manipulation reigned supreme. If TV news disappeared tonight, what difference would it make to our democracy. None.

In my moments of despair over journalism, the profession I love, I keep getting draw back to the Public Journalism Network charter declaration. Twenty-four of  us worked on that in early 2003, but I think we did a very good job of defining what we wanted from journalism. Here are a couple of my favorite declarations, the essense of which have been totally abandoned by commercial TV:

We believe journalism and democracy work best when news, information and ideas flow freely; when news fairly portrays the full range and variety of life and culture of all communities; when public deliberation is encouraged and amplified; and when news helps people function as political actors and not just as political consumers. 

We believe the best journalism helps people see the world as a whole and helps them take responsibility for what they see. 

Did that awful TV commentary tonight help me see the world better and to be a better actor in the democracy in which I live. No. Not at all. It was a waste of my time and instead of helping engage people in the political process, it has done nothing but drive them away.

As I said after the ABC News debate debacle and I will say here to CNN and MSNBC you owe the American people an apology. We deserve better.
 

If the ABC News Presidential Primary debate debacle had happened back then, people like David Brooks and George Stephanopoulos with their now totally neanderthal view of quality news and information, would have had the megaphone and totally trumped any criticism and put the Public Journalism people on the defensive. The movement had the right ideas, but lacked the DNA to make them heard and happen. In a figurative sense public journalism lacked the equivalent of thumbs. But alas it has the thumbs now.

In 2004 I wrote:

The new weblog-infused DNA makes public journalism more nimble and provides it with figurative set of thumbs. It allows public journalism to grasp and do things impossible in the old public journalism… We want to ensure that the … spin doctors do not control our elections..

I do believe if there are any spin doctors out there today thinking like Brooks did in his New York Times column, they are in big trouble. Brooks wrote:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues. 

This week, some 20 years after the first protests about this inane, neanderthal type of journalism, the spin doctors, Stephanopoulos and Brooks have learned that the people have their own megaphones and that the once struggling public journalism has evolved into the public’s journalism and its new thumbs cannot only grasp, but when push comes to shove, they can gouge.

First, Democrats, and especially Obama supporters, are going to jump all over ABC for the choice of topics: too many gaffe questions, not enough policy questions.

I understand the complaints, but I thought the questions were excellent. The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that…

Here is my favorite part, Brooks writes:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

Hey David, you forgot to mention that while H. W. Bush was touring the flag factories during the 1988 election the Republicans were also running the racist Willie Horton ads. In fact, it was exactly the very trivia and sleaze that David Brooks thinks is good journalism that led to the public or civic journalism movement. Here is what Charlotte Grimes wrote in a Harvard public policy paper:

The defining event for civic journalism is usually pinned to the 1988 presidential campaign, with its fixation on horse-race polls and focus on Gary Hart’s adultery, George Bush’s visits to flag factories and Willie Horton ads, and Michael Dukakis’ ride in a tank. The campaign was a triumph of trivia, sleaze and manipulation. And it provoked an outburst of soul-searching by many journalists on their role in it.

Apparently it caused no soul searching for David Brooks — he thinks manipulative questions are good journalism. He can make his elitist, well-mannered argument, but on this one I am siding with  my wife, who during the “symbolic issues” questioning Brooks describes above, was screaming: Haven’t they heard how many people died in Iraq today? Ask a question about that. Haven’t they heard how many people are losing their homes today? Ask about that.

David, maybe you haven’t heard, the American people are tired of the trivia oriented, sleazy and manipulative political maneuvering, which you so politely call “symbolic issues.”

Of course, David Brooks, who has sided with the current administration on so many bad policy decisions, would prefer that the real issues get ignored. So David let me ask you a symbolic issues question: Which is more important an American flag lapel pin or the 4,000 plus flag-draped caskets that have come back to America from the Iraq war which you supported? Apparently in a debate you think the former is more important, my wife thinks the latter and so do I and so do most other Americans.

It took about an hour before the first real policy question was asked, then the debate took on some semblance of high ground. But this morning the front page New York Times article, also reproduced by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, dealt only with the inane part of the debate with a headline that reads: Clinton Employs Broad Attacks in a Key Debate.

The whole article deals with the attacks, and mentions in passing that the personality clashes were “Helped along by the questions of the moderators…”

That’s the equivalent of writing a whole story on, let’s say, a police interrogation and mentioning in passing that the confession was was helped along by waterboarding.

Never once did John R. Broder, The New York Times writer, explain how awful the question selection was, instead he, wrote in the Times edition I received in Atlanta:

“During the first half of the debate, the candidates spent so much time sparring over issues of character that they had little chance to discuss major issues that have dominated past debates, with Mr. Obama mentioning Iraq only 40 minutes into the event.”

The New York Times article is factual in every detail, but is fully wrong in context because it never mentions that the ABC News moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos forced the candidates into a personality debate. The questions, by their very nature, had nothing to do with policy. That was the story that was not reported, which the blogosphere for all its factual errors is getting completely correct.

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 So then I went to the ABC News debate story and found more than 1700 comments, here is the one that speaks my mind:

THIS DEBATE IS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!! What the heck are you doing?????? So much time on the errors/blunders/past, ya yayaya. Where were all the questions that affect the American people???I think this was shameful!!! You left no room for talking about real issues. And George & Charlie were where all the fault should lie. TERRIBLE, RUDE and IRRELEVANT QUESTIONS !!!!! … You owe PA an apology AND an apology to the candidates.