Posted by Justin Jeffre

Photo courtesy of here.

ABC and Fox will shut out six Democratic and Republican candidates from debates this weekend in New Hampshire. Democrats Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel will be excluded from ABC’s undemocratic debate on Saturday. Republicans Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter will be excluded from a debate hosted by Fox on Sunday. But do these self appointed gatekeepers have any business interfering with our democratic process?

Though the most important part of the electoral process is to have a deep discussion about the direction of our country, partisan corporations are allowed to dictate which candidates are allowed to have a voice and which don’t. It’s bad enough that these powerful corporations benefit from our corrupt campaign finance system while getting to use our public airwaves for free, but they are stifling this important discussion and our democratic process.

(The FCC continues to push for more media consolidation despite the public’s loud objections and fails to make broadcasters meet the minimum requirements of the past. Most recently the FCC gave big media a big Christmas gift allowing one corporation to own TV and radio stations as well as the daily paper in a town. The FCC no longer requires equal airtime or that broadcasters live up to their responsibility to inform our electorate about all the candidates that the voters will see on the ballot.)

In 2006 WCPO gave free airtime during the gubernatorial debates to Republican candidate Ken Blackwell and Democratic candidate Ted Strickland while excluding Libertarian candidate Bill Peirce and Green candidate Bob Fitrakis. Peirce and Fitrakis were excluded despite the fact that they both met the requirements to be placed on the ballot in a real Democratic process.

A large number of signatures from registered voters are required to be placed on the ballot. A much smaller and usually undisclosed number of people who may or may not be registered voters are called by private corporations early in the campaign season and asked who they would likely vote for if the election were held today.  The public has no way of knowing who was called, how they were selected and if they are in fact registered voters at all. And why should this override a more democratic process anyway?

The corporate media fails to cover candidates early in the campaign season and then they use secretive and undemocratic polls as a basis for excluding those that haven’t raised the kind of campaign contributions needed to purchase big media buys. Candidates can travel all around the state or nation and have town hall meetings and still not reach a tenth of the number of people that watch televised debates.

Locally, Channel 12 recently gave some big money council candidates free airtime by having them on their popular Sunday show “Newsmakers.” They refused to give equal time to other candidates. Cumulus radio did the same while other media outlets didn’t even bother to cover the race at all. During the 2005 Mayoral race, I was told by a sales rep from Fox that they could have me on their Sunday morning show, but that they “usually only have on candidates that do advertising with them.” By contrast, in France they have multiple parties and real debates. There were 12 Presidential candidates and they were all given a half hour of free airtime. Perhaps this is why France has a higher voter participation rate.

The Commission on Presidential Debates acts as another filter and will decide who can participate in the debates after the primaries are over. This commission is really a private corporation that is run by two corporate lobbyists. One is a corporate Democrat and the other is a corporate Republican. In 1996 they were even allowed to exclude a billionaire named Ross Perot that received about 19% of the vote in the previous election despite the fact that he withdrew and then jumped back into the race.

Instead of a vibrant debate from A to Z (in the nation that proclaims itself a model of democracy to be imposed on the rest of the world), we get a debate from A to B, or shall we say D to F. By excluding candidates like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich the corporate media takes important issues off of the table like ending the war in Iraq, repealing or renegotiating NAFTA and the so called free trade agreements, or reinstating our constitution and civil liberties.

These are important issues that the public supports and deserves to hear a vibrant debate about, but these positions don’t fit within the narrowly defined parameters of what is acceptable debate to the status quo or rulers of this country. While these charades we refer to as debates fail to be democratic or fully inform our electorate, they are the best cure for insomnia. It’s time for the American people to wake up and demand real media and election reform now or our nation will continue to move in the direction of a third world dictatorship.

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