The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
TheMaddow question: Should commentators moderate debates?
NEWYORK >> During her turn as moderator in last week’s Democratic primary debate, Rachel Maddow briefly scuffled with Bernie Sanders and, with Pete Buttigieg, induced the campaign rarity of a politician admitting to a failure.
But she didn’t put to rest the issue of whether NBC News was wise to include the host of MSNBC’s most popular opinion show as a questioner.
Some journalists and conservative critics have said this violates a traditional, if frayed, distinction between news and opinion. Maddow also faced the issue this spring when The New York Times pulled its reporters as regular guests on her show, saying it would enforce its rule of not letting its journalists appear on opinion programs.
Maddow played it straight during the two debate nights, asking 15 questions and addressing 12 of the 20 candidates onstage. She brought up climate change, guns, abortion policy and the Supreme Court. She wanted to know what Amy Klobuchar had done to help blacks and Latinos, and asked Joe Biden to address his vote in favor of the Iraq War.
When Maddow asked Sanders if his feelings had changed since a 2013 interview in which he said states should make decisions on gun policy, Sanders said, “that’s a mischaracterization of my thinking.”
Responded Maddow: “It’s a quote of you.”
In the wake of a police shooting of a black man in South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg was asked why the percentage of black police officers there had not changed during his time as mayor.
“Because I couldn’t get it done,” he replied.
NBC News executives and Maddow declined to publicly address the issue of her involvement, except to point out that Maddow helped moderated a debate between Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016. NBC distributed reviews and tweets of last week’s performance, including Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeting that some critics owed Maddow an apology. “She might have been the best of 5 moderators,” Rubin said.
“Her questions were focused, sharp, short and provocative,” said Tom Bettag, a longtime news producer who now teaches journalism at the University of Maryland. “She is very good as a questioner. I didn’t see anything in there that showed bias.”
Yet he questioned whether it sent the wrong message to include Maddow coming off the 2016 election, when many in the media missed or underestimated the views of Trump supporters. “Let’s not have the public assume that we’re definitely leaning in one direction,” he said.
NBC and MSNBC clearly have different missions, he said.
In choosing the moderators onstage in Miami, NBC News seemed intent on exposing different parts of its operation by including “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt, “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd, Telemundo’s Jose Diaz-Balart and Maddow.