Neither Mr. Gibson nor Mr. Stephanopoulos lived up to these responsibilities. In the words of Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos turned in "shoddy, despicable performances." As Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher describes it, the debate was a "travesty." We hope that the public uproar over ABC's miserable showing will encourage a return to serious journalism in debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees this fall. Anything less would be a betrayal of the basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public.
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I was on O'Reilly last night talking about the whiny uproar over the debate. They're icing the kicker, here, and it may work on the next left-leaning moderator charged with working a debate. They're very sensitive to being called right-wing tools, and the Left blogs know it.
Note that the first of the undersigned Guardians of Journalistic Integrity, Spencer Ackerman, turned an intellectual disagreement over a book review last week into a little slur fest for the writer of the book review. After all, it's all right to insult center-right, hawkish gay writers, right? That's the only way to uphold "serious journalism" while it's being attacked by the likes of Charlie Gibson.
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