Current debate format is an embarrassment
A bout 40 minutes after the start of Tuesday night’s Democratic primary debate, I got an email from a Washington Post reader with this subject line: “I don’t care for this.”
He was complaining, of course, about the Detroit debate on CNN, which he described as a reality TV show with journalists playing celebrity hosts. With frustratingly tiny and rigidly enforced response time, outsize attention to fringe candidates, and divisive questions — some of which could have been framed by the Republican National Committee — the Detroit debates were a lost opportunity to inform the voting public.
“Honestly, you could catalog all journalism’s faults just from watching debate moderators,” tweeted Joshua Benton, who runs Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab.
To wit: “An obsession with conflict over explanation, forcing complex policies into soundbites, above-it-all-savviness that only makes sense if you spend all your time on Politics Twitter or in DC.”
The worst of Night One may have been the format itself, which started with a painfully high-octane video that managed to simultaneously evoke the NFL Today, World Wresting Entertainment Inc., and “Jeopardy! “Then there was the spaceship-like set that (according to CNN’s Oliver Darcy) took 100 people eight days to build and involved nine 53-foot semi-trucks.
In one way, CNN’s efforts were an improvement from MSNBC’s first round of debates a couple of weeks ago; at least there was no absurd demand for a show of hands on complex policy proposals.
But there was a major flaw: CNN’s moderators, like the strictest of school masters, allowed almost no actual debating as they enforced the time limitations. That ridiculous rule needs immediate reform.
As I wrote after last month’s NBC debate, the best decision their moderators made last month was to allow former vice president Joe Biden and California senator Kamala Harris the air time for a substantive back-and-forth on race-related issues.
With 10 candidates on stage each night, time limits are bound to be a challenge, yet such strict enforcement is completely counter-productive for meaningful exchanges.
There’s got to be a better way. I asked a few experts for suggestions. Here’s what I heard:
■ No opening statements, allowing more time for substantive answers to questions, and to responses to the other candidates.
■ Topics and questions sourced entirely from voters, which could be gathered in advance.
■ Comparison graphics about candidates’ positions offered in real time.
“Political journalism needs to collapse the distance between politicians and the public,” so whatever journalists can do to “act less as gatekeepers and more as conduits for the public’s agenda, the better,” said Jennifer Brandel, CEO and founder of Hearken, which consults with newsrooms about better listening and responding to the public.
Jill Miller Zimon, project director of the Ohio Debate Commission (one of four statewide debate commissions in the U.S.), told me the current debate format not only doesn’t serve the public very well, but also cheats the candidates.
“Well-managed debates play a role in informing the public but they also should honor candidates stepping up and into the arena,” Zimon said.
The current, too-predictable setup tends to “shroud the authenticity of a candidate,” she said. Do we really get to know who these people are?
The networks, and the DNC, should pay heed.
The debates aren’t completely pointless, of course. Even in their current format, they give the public a look at the wide field of candidates and their ideas. But they should be so much better. This moment in history demands it.