Media glut helps distort truth
In a democracy, especially one as wired as ours is to instant and unverifiable electronic media, it is especially important that candidates for office make statements they can support with evidence. If reckless claims can be paraded as truth, where do average citizens stand? They stand in a fog of emotional rhetoric. A proliferation of news sources should strengthen democracy, but ironically it undermines it because so many sources are not vetted, and mere opinion (or worse) fills people’s heads. That breeds cynicism, the antithesis of democracy. This is where responsible journalism comes in. Vetting content according to standards of ethics and professionalism is essential. For example, the Truth-o-Meter items in the AJC help a great deal, but only if people actually read them with an objective eye. Candidates can, and do, say most anything, often in circumlocutions that don’t so much tell falsehoods as equivocate and set up false truths. I think too many candidates hire weavers to make democracy’s version of the emperor’s new clothes, ones that purposely conceal or distort the truth. Responsible voters need to see through those ugly garments.
RICKS CARSON, ATLANTA
Allow a real debate to take place
For all the criticism raining down on the debate moderators for asking “unfair” questions and CNBC execs firing back in response that anyone running for President shouldn’t whine about tough inquiries, I think a more pertinent consideration has been missed. Are these moderators largely asking debate questions at all? In a real debate, it should be possible for each candidate to address the very same issues and present opposing arguments. Instead, much of what we’ve witnessed are moderators (Fox, CNN, CNBC) who have presented questions specific to only one individual, designed to see how he/she squirms. The appropriate role of a moderator is not to interview or interrogate participants, but rather raise debate-relevant issues, enhance the ability of the debaters to engage one another in back-and-forth discussion, help keep them on topic, and confine dialogue to agreed-upon time limits. And then stay out of the way.
ALAN FOSTER, ACWORTH
Media criticism refreshing, well-deserved
I was heartened to read Bert Roughton Jr.’s opinion of the performance of the moderators for the Republican presidential debate in his Nov. 1 column (“Media take well-deserved hit,” Opinion). His criticism of their snarky, agenda-based questions is well-founded and points to the fact that the media itself may be a contributing factor to the political polarization that exists today in our country. Not trusting what we hear and read in the media has become a way of life for many of us. Unfortunately, all you have to do is glance across to the opposing page to find in Mike Luckovich’s cartoon which takes to task Mr. Roughton’s opinion of the CNBC moderators, making light of the concerns that he expressed. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
RANDY CASSTEVENS, ROSWELL
