We Need Fair Debates, and MSNBC Won’t Give Us One

Fair debates are a necessary part of the democratic process. When debates aren’t fair, we’re prevented from accurately assessing the candidates. We’re prevented from making informed decisions, decisions that will impact the lives of millions of people.

We have a recent history of debate malfeasance, so it’s our responsibility to watch for shenanigans. In 2016, the debates were rigged in favor of Hilary Clinton. This was confirmed by WikiLeaks and later supported by Donna Brazile, the Democratic National Committee’s interim chairperson.

A 2016 Democratic primary candidate, Jim Webb, said about the 2016 debates, “That debate was, I’m going to be very frank, rigged in terms of who was going to get the time on the floor by the way that Anderson Cooper was selecting people to supposedly respond to something someone else said. I even turned around to Bernie Sanders at one point and said, ‘Bernie! Say my name, will you? Just say my name!'”

Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that MSNBC has a preferred candidate once again.

The first debate was split into two nights with ten candidates debating each night. The first debate included Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee, Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, and John Delaney.

It’s pretty clear who had the cards stacked in her favor.

During the first twenty-two minutes of the debate, Elizabeth Warren had already been asked four questions by the moderators. Most of the other candidates were only asked one, two at most.

Brazenly, Warren was given both the first and the last question of the night. Clearly, this wasn’t random. These are the two most coveted questions, with the most impact and memorability for viewers. These questions set the tone for the entire debate, including in people’s memories of it.

At one point, Chuck Todd even spoke complimentarily of Warren’s “many ambitious bills,” and made a joke to the audience along the lines of “don’t worry, we’ll hear from everyone at some point” — as if he knows how untrustworthy he is, and that his incompetency is just one big joke. Which, to be fair, is pretty funny, because MSNBC told me that Russia is the one undermining our elections!

Tulsi Gabbard’s sister tweeted from Tulsi’s account during the debate, “It’s clear who MSNBC wants to be president: Elizabeth Warren. They’re giving her more time than all the other candidates combined. They aren’t giving any time to Tulsi at all.”

She’s not exaggerating. Tulsi was asked very few questions, and the second was about her past discrimination of LGBTQ+ people. Tulsi made these anti-LGBTQ+ comments when she was in her early twenties, almost twenty years ago now, and has since had an excellent LGBTQ+ civil rights record. Tulsi is a member of the LGBT Equality Caucus in the House, she’s sponsored or co-sponsored multiple LGBTQ+ protection bills in Congress, has been endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign (the largest LGBTQ+ rights organization in the country), and has since apologized for and disavowed her previous homophobic comments. Tulsi Gabbard isn’t my favorite candidate for a number of reasons, but spending precious debate time covering this tired smear is an absurd waste of voters’ time. And moderators know this. Not a single other candidate was asked a similarly irrelevant question. Not even when Cory Booker was droning on and on about lowering pharmaceutical drug prices did the moderators ask about why he’d previously voted against bills that would do this.

Why didn’t they ask Elizabeth Warren why she used to be a Republican? Warren was a Republican around the same time that Tulsi was anti-LGBTQ+, and around the same time that the Defense of Marriage Act was being supported and passed by Republicans in Congress. Warren is allowed personal growth, but Tulsi is not? To be clear, both of these questions would have been a waste of debate time, but it’s no coincidence that the moderators chose to squander time on undercutting the more progressive candidate while ignoring the past transgressions of the other.

Elizabeth Warren answered a lot of questions very well. This analysis is not meant as an attack against her. I’m personally disturbed by her consistent subservience to the military industrial complex, and her lack of progressive leadership, which I’ve outlined here.

But to be clear, I’d be suspicious of anyone, even my preferred candidate, if they were being propped up by the corporate media.

Why? Because the corporate media is incentivized to support candidates who will maintain the status quo as it currently exists. Or, who at least won’t stray too far away from it.

For example, NBC and MSNBC, the networks hosting the first debate, are owned by the General Electric Company (GE). GE was the 12th largest beneficiary of Defense Department contracts in 2018, taking in almost $3 billion dollars worth of contracts.

GE is the 7th wealthiest corporation on the planet, with assets worth well over $650 billion. Who wants to guess how they feel about corporate tax increases? Media corporations are extremely powerful and wealthy, so their biases will always favor the 1%.

NBC and MSNBC are dependent upon maintaining the status quo, ensuring that our tax dollars are given to the military industrial complex instead of to social programs benefiting the working class. Their existence is dependent upon keeping corporate and wealth taxes low or nonexistent, instead of going to social programs benefiting the working class. Programs such as Medicare for All, relieving student loan debt, or fighting climate change. In other words, their incentivized to work against progressive reforms.

How can we trust a network to offer us an objective debate when they’re encouraged to protect their own profits over our education? How can they get away with not clearly disclosing this major conflict of interest?

Elizabeth Warren has some legitimate progressive credibility. I was pleased when, during the debate, she doubled down on her support for Sanders’ Medicare for All bill. But even so, we have to recognize when a debate is stacked in a single candidate’s favor, because this fundamentally undermines our democracy. And after the first primary debate, it’s pretty clear that Warren is a favorite among the corporate media. I expect that we’ll see a similar bias in favor of Biden in the second half of the debate on June 27th.

It’s easy enough to fix this problem. Why aren’t the debates hosted on C-SPAN? Do they not have the required graphics packages? Or is it because NBC would lose those advertising profits? How about giving different candidates the opening and closing questions, making it a random selection? How about giving candidates the same number of initial questions and debate time? Or challenging candidates on their records instead of only their rhetoric?

Regardless of who we support, we have to demand that debates are free from corporate media bias, because corporate media bias will always favor the 1%. It’s our responsibility as citizens of a (potential) democracy to be suspicious anytime that the corporate media favors a single candidate over the others.

They tried that in 2016, and look what it got us.