Many of the members of www.democrats.com want to boycott ABC News over the PA Democratic party presidential debate. Last week, April 2008 the American Broadcasting company broadcast the only PA Democratic primary Democratic presidential debate. It was held in the US Constitution Center in down town Phila, PA. The center is located in the historic section of the city of Brotherly and Sisterly love, Philadelphia Cheese steaks, Hoagies, soft pretzals etc. Specificially the event happened near Independence Park and Independence Mall. The vicinity of where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The signing of our independence from Great Britain.

The reasons given for boycotting ABC News are several. Every one of them is to do with the debate. The main criticisms were the hard questions dealing with important issues weren't asked until at least forty five minutes into the debate. There was some woman asking how patriotic Obama was when she noticed he didnt wear a flag pin. I wonder why she wasn't inquiring Clinton. She wasn't wearing one either. I thought that moment was utterly irrelevant.
Topics such as the economy, health care , gun control, education weren't even mentioned until pretty much the second hour. The entire event was two hours running time, minus the commercials.

The second complaint was since George Stephanopolis was employed by the Clintons he couldn't be objective.
Those are basically the justifications for the boycot.
While I think these are valid reasons I do think it may be unfair to boycot ABC News. ABC News like virtually every other news show, or any other company for that matter are made up of individuals. There may be individual reporters, other news staff members who thought too, the debate was a debacle. Why punish them? Why go punishing people with nothing to do with what happened that night? That isn't fair. I think it would be much fairer to be boycotting any ABC show with Charlie Gibson and/or George Stephanopolis.
One may see Bill Gates as a computer software monopolizer but if you don't watch MSNBC because of what your opinion of Mr Gates is, you miss watching Keith Olbermann, courageous, progressive reporter on the station.

In esence, my point is boycotts punish the innocent. If you want to make your point in disapproving of some action, protest the person involved, not someone totally innocent of the specific situation being discussed.

Learn more about this author, Lynda Appell.
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about US elections 2008: Assessing the media's negative impact on the campaign?
We want to hear your view. Write now!