No Debate: Tonight Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri will host the vice-presidential debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joseph Biden. The debate will be moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS. Senator McCain and Governor Palin have been sowing doubts about how fair Ifill will be because of a book she’s writing that’s called “Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” The McCain campaign and right-wing pundits allege that Ifill might be biased in favor of Senator Obama. Whats missing however is any concern about the fairness of the very structure of the debate. The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate as well as the topics raised during the debates. But the contract remains secret and the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation created by the two major parties, has refused to release the contract to the public. Open Debates is a non-profit committed to democratizing the presidential debate process. Last month Open Debates and nine other pro-democracy groups called on the Commission to make the contract public. George Farah is the founder and executive director of Open Debates. He is the author of “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.” George Farah, executive director and founder of Open Debates. He is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.
How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates
By Democracy Now!
02/10/09 --- The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates. We speak to Open Debates founder and executive director George Farah.
Friday, 3 October 2008
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