by We have yet another reason to be disappointed in the federal election debate: the date. Because we allow a media consortium dominated by private media interests to determine the date of the debate, the debate is scheduled for a day that has the least impact on said media interests’ bottom lines.
We have yet another reason to be disappointed in the federal election debate: the date. Because we allow a media consortium dominated by private media interests to determine the date of the debate, the debate is scheduled for a day that has the least impact on said media interests’ bottom lines.
This means that the 2008 federal election debate is held on the night when the big networks in the States are running something else particularly interesting to political junkies: the US Vice-Presidential candidates’ debate. I, for one, would rather watch to see if the Republican political machine can teach Palin enough to be able to compete with an experience political operative such as Biden. Based on Palin’s wooden performance in friendly interviews this week, I’m begining to doubt it.
My desire to watch the US debate is only increased by knowing the Canadian debate will be a donnybrook between five leaders.
What’s worse is that while most Canadians do not watch the federal election debate, many tune into the news coverage after to learn how the debate went, who fared best and who performed the worst. However, because we let this consortium control the date and timing of the debate, this will not happen this year. The federal election debates, normally run in the early evening, will air between 9 and 11 pm. If one’s regular newscast is at 10 (as mine is), I’m willing to bet people will go to bed instead of staying up an extra hour to watch the debate coverage.
I’ve never been convinced that the debates actually mattered much to the election process, but this set of circumstances indicates that the 2008 election debate will matter very little to anyone save the Green Party, and they’ve already made the hay they need to off of it.