Are political reporters asking the right questions?

Our question of the week this week is two-part, and inspired by the backlash over questions asked by two ABC newsmen at Wednesday’s debate between the two remaining Democratic candidates for U.S. president, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Here’s what I wrote on OJR’s “editor’s note” yesterday: “It becomes more difficult to make a compelling argument that the decline of the professional news industry harms society when the amateurs come up with better Presidential debate questions than the pros do.”

The WaPo’s Tom Shales unloaded, too, though the NYT’s resident op/ed page conservative, David Brooks, defended the questioning.

What say you? Were the questions appropriate, useful and insightful? Or the type of horse-race, ‘inside baseball,’ gotchas that many bloggers use as justification for attacks on the so-called mainstream media?

Finally, let’s put that final assertion to a test here. Which do you think is a better source for true and accurate coverage of the White House and the race for it?

We’d love to hear your comments on these issues, too.

About Robert Niles

Robert Niles is the former editor of OJR, and no longer associated with the site. You may find him now at http://www.sensibletalk.com.

Comments

  1. Dena Langdon says:

    One has to wonder whether Hillary Clinton was in on what the “journalists” asked at that “debate.” It took them an hour to get to question 16 about the number one issue facing the country. Earlier questions just weren’t news by then. What a waste of time and resources and what an insult to the intelligence of the electorate!

  2. 75.35.174.247 says:

    Bad enough that ABC used a former Clinton public relations guy as one of two reporters. Even worse: The early questions were of little value. Does Obama really know how “patriotic” his pastor is, and who really cares? So now we have the implications of a conflict of interest with the selection of Clinton’s former PR guy, and the reality of a weak line of first questions. It makes an appearance look like a reality. Shame, shame ABC! We hoped you had better judgement.

  3. 67.53.239.239 says:

    The questions went to electability, so they were appropriate — and were about concerns that have surfaced since the last debate. Frankly, the interviewers let a lot of followup questions go, as did Clinton, in not telling Obama he was — well — forgetful when Obama said that her former pastor supported his (not so; it was her former church but with a new pastor) and when Obama said that his handwriting was not on the questionnaire where he said he was for gun control (it is his handwriting) and when Obama said that he never said he would not wear a flag pin (he did and on tape) and when Obama said . . . it goes on and on, and I counted at least six, uh, “memory losses” by him. I would call them lies, but let us give him the possibility that he was just not ready for prime time.

    Obama faced 20 minutes in one debate of the sort of questions that Clinton has faced repeatedly in most of the previous 20 debates — including the infamous questions asked about her of all eight men in the race in October, when they were asked to trash her, but she was not given rebuttal time.

    Personally, I prefer that debates go back to public television and be run by the League of Women Voters again, rather than we-the-people being sold to advertisers so that networks get ratings for the terrible job that most have done with debates this year — and are continuing to do.

  4. 82.161.107.9 says:

    I look at these political debates and other ‘news coverage’ from Europe and keep wonderering what has happened to journalism in the States over the last decades.
    For insight into what really matters I have to rely on fake news shows like The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher.
    What a strange world: news shows are now presented by clowns while comedians tell us the truth. Kind of like the Dark Ages (think clergy in stead of journalism).

  5. I am wondering: What is the point of this silly exercise? Internet “polls” of the type you are running are invalid, in the scientific sense. The people participating do not constitute a random sample, so it doesn’t matter how the vote comes out; the result means nothing, as anyone with a Statistics 101 education will tell you.

    I’m personally offended by this feature of your site. I realize it’s easy to put up, and it generates traffic.

    But is generating traffic with meaningless disinformation really the point of OJR?

  6. I explained this on http://www.www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/071210niles/

    The point is to elicit a discussion.