President Bush and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry do not like to look stupid. The candidates' campaigns wanted to secure their insecurity at the debates by not allowing certain camera shots and angles, and asked the networks to abide. They were rightfully shot down. Stay on your toes, tonight, fellas.
Problem solved. Or, then again, maybe not. Every major television news network, including CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News Channel has refused to follow those rules, and moderators Charles Gibson and Bob Schieffer have not signed written statements pledging to play by the rules.
What remains at stake when journalists are asked to restrict their coverage is the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Whoever slipped this little gem into the ground rules failed to realize the reach and importance of freedom of the press. It is true that when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution they were thinking of newspapers. Nevertheless, the principle still applies.
How a news network chooses to package its footage and present it to the public is in its own way an expression of that network's constitutionally guaranteed freedom. The justification that defends the disputed ground rules is that any live audio feed would be unadulterated. This excuse should be acceptable to no one. Any time a candidate asks U.S. citizens to forsake their constitutional rights in the name of vanity, there is a serious, serious problem, no matter how trite the demand may seem. This demand is tantamount to a police officer asking a reporter to turn away from a murder scene, or only talk to certain people and look at certain things.
News agencies can't really be expected to abide by rules that neither campaign is entitled to enforce. Even if the rules were in place, there would be no real way to enforce them. The presidential candidates wouldn't know what TV cameras were actually showing until after the live feed had ceased and they watched the game film at home.
If anything, the news networks can only be acclaimed for standing up for themselves. Telling the media how to do its job is not a "small detail" to be worked out, as Kerry campaign spokeswoman Christine Anderson suggested. Comparably, the Bill of Rights is not a "small detail" to the Constitution. Potentially, the ground rules would have represented a huge backslide and erosion of free speech by the press, even if that was not the original intention.
Politicians should not be made to look good at the expense of essential American rights. Since their very beginning, televised debates have shaped the way our country has thought about presidential candidates and influenced the way we vote. John F. Kennedy was elected to the Oval Office in part because Richard Nixon's suit was drab against the background and he was allegedly ill.
To selectively retool what we see during the debates would effectively lie to the voter. Denying the American public the big picture of what actually happens during the debates could potentially sway and tamper with the way the undecided choose to vote. This sort of interference should not be tolerated.
