How Dare Charlie Gibson Allow Ron Paul To Speak! But wait; the NYT are the bad guys right? I mean, they promote all this liberal, we hate Bush, America is bad, we oppose the war - etc. Right?
So why is one of their targets now Charlie Gibson and Ron Paul? The New York Times - who should
just love Ron Paul because "they support anyone who opposes the war".
Because the NYT is afterall, when it all boils down, and a propaganda paper for our ruling oligarchy. As is "fair and balanced" FOX in audio and visual form.
The fact is, Ron Paul is beginning to worry these people. It was obvious from the start that he would upset the status quo - and unshackle us as a nation from those who are oppressing and fleecing us. Now he appears to be getting real traction they are actually starting to worry about him. The scoffing seems to be drying up.
Money talks. Wonder who prodded Ms. stanley to write this one.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/us/politics/06watch.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=sloginThe TV Watch
He Came, and He Saw, but Did He Moderate?
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: January 6, 2008
The first debates after the Iowa caucuses were a crucible for the candidates, but they were also a test of the Gibson Doctrine. ABC’s anchor, Charles Gibson, began the evening with a policy statement: “The less of a moderator, the better.”
Last night, however, a little more moderator would have been for the best.
Charles Gibson’s low-key, avuncular style was a counterpoint to the aggressive cross-examinations of Tim Russert, of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in the debates he moderated. But in the end, Mr. Gibson’s approach came off as passive-aggressive.
At certain moments, he loftily lectured the candidates. He scolded the Republicans for “intellectual dishonesty” about oil prices. He mocked Democrats who promised to change Washington, saying, “God love you all.”
But Mr. Gibson withdrew whenever the discussions grew heated. And by not intervening more forcefully early on in the Republican debate, he allowed much of their discussion to remain staid and uninformative — Representative Ron Paul, of all candidates, dominated the foreign policy debate.
When Rudolph W. Giuliani and others began to pile on Mr. Paul about his views on radical Islam, the discussion got so tangled that Mr. Gibson held up his hands in a time-out sign, saying with a helpless laugh: “Time. Time.” That prompted Mitt Romney to chide him, “You started it.”
The candidates are not the only ones seeking higher office. There was a reason why Mr. Gibson spent so much time ahead of the debate explaining how he wouldn’t take time away from the candidates: he is running for the position of America’s anchor.
A little like Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Gibson faced low expectations when he became the ABC anchorman in May 2006. He seemed too old and rumpled to catch up with Brian Williams, NBC’s sleek, youthful anchorman, who held a comfortable, commanding lead in the ratings. Mr. Gibson didn’t seem flashy enough to compete with Katie Couric, who was noisily promoted by CBS as the face of the future.
Instead, viewers turned out not to want change: audiences preferred Mr. Gibson’s easy, dignified style and comforting familiarity. Now, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Williams are basically running neck-to-neck for the No. 1 spot, and Mr. Gibson has the advantage: in 2007, ABC’s evening news program was the one that gained viewers, while NBC lost almost 500,000.
And like a candidate trying to lower expectations before a crucial vote, Mr. Gibson played down his own role in the debates. “To the extent that I can I’ll shut up and hope that they talk to each other,” he said on ABC News just before the debate.
Mr. Gibson grew more assertive in the second half of the evening, boring in on Senator Barack Obama on the subject of attacking Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and prodding Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to challenge Mr. Obama’s readiness to take office. As the evening wore on, he forgot his pledge to be the invisible moderator and showed off his bona fides, saying in a prelude to a question to Democrats about a possible nuclear attack, “I’ve read a lot about this.”
Mr. Gibson clearly set out to stay in the background. Each new topic was introduced with an explanatory video clip by ABC News reporters. Mr. Gibson even used a clip of President Bush discussing the need for firm principles to ask the Republican candidates to discuss “constancy” on policy issues. He seemed to be opening the debate to the problem of policy flip-flops.
But the question was posed in such a vague way that it allowed each candidate to recite self-serving boilerplate about their personal philosophies. Mike Huckabee recited lines from the Declaration of Independence.
Mostly, Mr. Gibson seemed ambivalent. At times, he worked hard to appear unobtrusive — crouched in his seat like Rodin’s thinker, he put a finger over his mouth before he finished a sentence, as if hushing himself. At others, he turned magisterial. He insisted that the Republican and Democratic candidates meet on stage in between debates and shake hands, telling the audience, “What unites us is greater than what divides us.”
He never lost his cool, however, and it was a night that required stamina: monitoring two back-to-back debates was a little like sitting through all three parts of Tom Stoppard’s eight-and-a-half hour trilogy “Coast of Utopia” in one day.
Mr. Gibson had said that moderating a debate is a “high-wire act.” It is. But by insisting that he would stay out of the fray, he allowed himself to look a little like a witness called in to testify before a Senate hearing, where committee member pontificate at length while the witness looks on gravely, hoping to not look bored or foolish on camera.
[END]
............... READ THE DEBATE TRANSCRIPT AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-rdebate.html----------------------------------------------
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