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Folks are highly upset with ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for spending the first 50 minutes of Wednesday night's Democratic candidates' debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on old, media-worn issues.
The two journalists forced both candidates to comment on such scandals as the Jeremiah Wright comments, Obama's "bitter" gaffe and Hillary Clinton's "sniper fire" remarks, while questions about the war in Iraq and "kitchen table" issues - the economy, health care and the mortgage crisis - weren't brought up until the second hour.
In his Washington Post review of Wednesday night's debate from Philadelphia, critic Tom Shales said Gibson and Stephanopoulos "turned in shoddy, despicable performances."
They "dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news," wrote Shales. "Some were barely news to begin with."
Shales added: "Gibson sat there peering down at the candidates over glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking prosecutorial and at times portraying himself as a spokesman for the working class."
Regarding Stephanopoulos, who served as the press secretary for Hillary's husband Bill Clinton during his presidency, Shales said he "looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy. He came up with such tired tripe as a charge that Obama once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist. That was '40 years ago, when I was 8 years old,' Obama said with exasperation."
By mid-afternoon Thursday, more than 15,600 viewers posted comments on the ABC News Web site criticizing the "biased" and "superficial" questions posed by Stephanopoulos.
Philadelphia Daily News writer Will Bunch posted an open letter to Gibson and Stephanopoulos on his blog. He said he was so angry that "it's hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking."
"By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself," Bunch wrote.
Greg Mitchell of the trade publication Editor and Publisher said it was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year."
