As we enter the final months of the presidential campaigns, voters are looking towards the debates. The first one will be in New York on September 26. However, unless we mobilize to change the process for presidential debates, voters will not get to hear the views of all candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to win the election. We’ll talk about the presidential debate commission, which is really a private corporation, the ways that debates are restricted by the Democrats and Republicans and what we can do to create greater democracy.
Listen here:
Relevant articles and websites:
League Refuses to Help Perpetrate a Fraud by Nancy Neumann
TV Networks Should Open Up the Presidential Debates by Jeff Cohen
Guests:
Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He has been a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986, and cofounded the online activist group RootsAction.org in 2011. His columns on media issues have been published online at such websites as HuffingtonPost, CommonDreams and Alternet—and in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and Miami Herald.
Jo Vaccarino is a Clinical thermographer, health freedom advocate, Fair Debates Taskforce Developer. Advocate for Fair Debates, election reform and ending corruption in our government and the election process. She is on the team of Downsize DC and Zero Aggression Project as well as the Gary Johnson 2012 and 2016 campaigns.