NEW YORK TIMES FLOATS TRIAL BALLOON: Let’s Scrap the Presidential Debates. “This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests.”
That’s rich.
UPDATE (From Ed): The Times article includes this paragraph:
Perhaps the most substantive televised debate of all was the first one, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which Nixon was considered to have won on substance on the radio, while the cooler and more appealing Kennedy won on television. Since these weren’t true debates, the concept of “winning” one of these odd encounters was always amorphous. (To be sure, many questions by panels of journalists were designed less to stimulate debate than to challenge one of the candidates.)
As Joseph Campbell has noted at his Media Myth Alert blog, this is “one of the most delicious, enduring, and often-repeated myths about the American media and politics:”
The myth of viewer-listener disagreement — that television viewers and radio listeners had starkly different impressions of the inaugural presidential debate — was destroyed (or ought to have been) in research published in 1987 by David L. Vancil and Sue D. Pendell.
They noted that reports of viewer-listener disagreement were thin, flawed, and anecdotal, and the few surveys that hinted at a viewer-listener disconnect were too small and unrepresentative to allow for confident assessments.
Vancil and Pendell concluded:
“The relationship of substance and appearance is complex, and the effects of electronic media on political communication surely deserve attention. However, there is little merit in speculation based upon unsupported anecdotes of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.”
Vancil and Pendell’s research also challenged the notion that Nixon’s haggard look much contributed to views about the debate.
“Appearance problems, such as Nixon’s perspiring brow, could have had a negative impact on viewer perceptions,” they wrote, “but it is also possible for viewers to be sympathetic to such problems, or to interpret them as evidence of attractive or desirable qualities.”
They added: “Even if viewers disliked Nixon’s physical appearance, the relative importance of this factor is a matter of conjecture.”
It’s revealing to note that a good deal of post-debate commentary deemed the encounter a draw.
To paraphrase the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, This is the DNC-MSM, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
