Kucinich Exclusion Sparks Question: Is There a Better Way?

As has been widely noted, Dennis Kucinich was barred from participating in the NBC Democratic Debate on January 15th.

A little background: NBC publicly announced its criteria for inclusion in the debate to be a fourth-place or better showing in a national poll, which Kucinich met by placing fourth in the USA/Gallop poll earlier in the month. NBC sent him an invitation and then, less than 44 hours later, rescinded it, stating that it had changed its criteria for inclusion to limit participation in the debate to only three candidates. In response, Kucinich sued NBC in Nevada for breach of contract, a lower courts judge filed an injunction to prevent the debate from going on if it excluded Kucinich, and then NBC appealed to the Supreme Court of Nevada to have the ruling overturned. Needless to say, NBC won, and the debate continued without Kucinich or much debate, period.

In any case, Democracy Now! gave Kucinich the chance to respond to some of the debate during their daily broadcast. You can watch it, listen to it, or read the transcript here. Skip about 25 minutes in to get to Kucinich's part.

But why did NBC wish to exclude Kucinich from participation in the debate? Kucinich claims corporate bias. Sure, Dennis, the big bad corporations are out to get you, just like the aliens in their UFOs. Poor, funny looking man.

Thankfully, NBC News correspondent Kevin Corke cleared up everything and explained the network's position on Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show:

"We were expecting to have the three major candidates. Why? Well quite frankly, because those are the probable candidates. That pool is the most viable pool. And truthfully, most people want to hear what Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama have to say. After all, those are probably the three they’re going to be picking from."

How right you are! Why should we want to hear the views of a candidate who has no chance of being elected because no one knows much about his ideas?

As if he couldn't dig himself a bigger hole, Corke continues, addressing Kucinich's presence at the debate:

"I’m not so sure it serves the voters that well, but certainty there’s a feeling here that every voice needs to be heard."

This brings me to my point: why are private corporations allowed to have this much control over our presidential election?

Now, I am not of the opinion that every news source and television station should give equal air time to each political party, as there are enough competing sources that bias to either party to allow people access to the full spectrum of popular ideas. I use "popular" to denote mainstream major party candidates or ideas because, let's face it, those are the only ones you are ever going to hear about in the mainstream media, even with an equal air time mandate.

Presidential primary debates are a different matter. Many Americans get most of their information about candidates from the debates. The debates are also the biggest outlet for the "minor" candidates' views - they do not have big budgets to saturate the media with ad campaigns and they are certainly not mentioned often by newscasts and panel shows. Lastly, only one debate airs at any given time, sponsored by one network and/or one special interest group, thus presenting one "slant" on the matter - whether it be through outright physical exclusion of candidates from the debate or a symbolic one by focusing on the pre-selected, "most viable" choices.

What is most disturbing is that every network - and every special interest group that has had its debate aired on a major network - has shown the same bias to the same candidates, namely Clinton and Obama, and to a lesser extent, Edwards.

It is this homogeneous showing that leads to the question: is there a better way? In the next few posts, I will take a closer look at the debates, making my focus first on the Democratic presidential primary debates as they have had the highest frequency of exclusions.