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Better than Lipstick on a Pig [FreePress - Citizen Media Debate Scorecard]

by Erik Larson | September 24, 2008 at 01:21 pm

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Sick of the questions the corporate talking heads ask and don't ask at the US Presidential debates, but watching them anyway? Rate the moderators with a mouse-click while you do; Free Press has created a Citizens Media Scorecard and is requesting public participation. Results will be analyzed by Andrew Tyndall and distributed to hundreds of political and media reporters.

The internet is changing media and society; people are tired of choices between crap, and want real information and particpation, which the web allows. If corporate America continues to attempt to control public knowledge and the political process in the US (and other nations), the People are going to create alternatives; the web has been, is and will be a huge catalyst for constructive change.

Media Matters analyzed the 2,304 questions asked during the 31 primary debates. Of these, only 9 percent of the questions addressed the economy, counted by Americans as the most important issue today -- followed by the war, healthcare, energy policy and jobs.

Meanwhile, debate moderators piled on the fluff, asking questions about personality and other "non-substantive" matters more than 30 percent of the time.

The final Democratic primary debate, with ABC News' Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, was a low point. The moderators devoted the first 45 minutes to questions about flag pins, former pastors and candidate sniping before raising a single question about Iraq or the economy.

Free Press hopes to help remedy this during this Friday's debate. We have devised a "Citizens Media Scorecard" that will allow thousands of debate watchers to "score" the performance of the media moderators during the final four presidential and vice presidential debates.

These real-time ratings will be analyzed by esteemed media researcher Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report and immediately fed back to hundreds of political and media reporters as soon as the debates are finished -- allowing the public to weigh in before the media spin cycle gets out of control.