MB Civic

Action Alert
NY1 Silences Debate
Refuses to allow Clinton challenger Tasini in television primary debate because not enough money in his hopper, only public support!

8/4/06

On the basis of the rules described below if Tasini had 51% popular support in the polls
he still  wouldn’t qualify for the TV debate
because of lack of funds that counts!
.
There is a heated debate among Democrats about the direction of the party, with
centrist party stalwarts facing challenges from the left on issues like the Iraq War.
But New York City voters will have a more
difficult time seeing this debate play out, as
New York City cable news channel NY1
(which is owned by Time Warner) has
blocked the anti-war Democratic challenger
Jonathan Tasini from a primary race debate
against incumbent Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In a statement (Village Voice, 8/2/06), the
channel said it had “established criteria to
identify which candidates would be invited
to participate” in the debates: poll at least
5 percent and have spent and/or raised
$500,000.

In a recent Marist poll (7/19/06), Tasini
stood at 13 percent, but his campaign has
only raised $150,000.

By contrast, Tom Suozzi, seeking the
Democratic nomination for governor of
New York, is less popular with voters-at
only 9 percent in a recent poll (NY1.com,
7/24/06)-but he was included in NY1’s July
25 gubernatorial debate, having spent over
$6 million on his campaign (Ithaca Journal,
6/26/06).

NY1’s criteria reflect the undemocratic way
in which media outlets measure the
seriousness of a candidacy. By the station’s
rules, a candidate’s popularity with the
public is meaningless without hundreds of
thousands of dollars of campaign funding.
But without the exposure that debates
provide, grassroots candidates running on
a shoestring budget have little chance of
communicating their positions to the
majority of voters-people whom deep-pocketed rivals can reach easily through
advertising campaigns and media coverage
from mainstream media gatekeepers who
have sanctioned those candidates as
legitimate.

As writer/activist Barbara Ehrenreich said
at a Tasini campaign forum protesting the
exclusion (Village Voice, 8/2/06), “When you have to have half a million dollars to
tell people what you stand for, then we’re
not talking about democracy anymore,
we’re talking about plutocracy.”

The League of Women Voters, which for
many years served as the main sponsor of
national and local debates, requires only
that a candidate has met the legal
standard for getting on the ballot-in this
case, 15,000 signatures. Tasini received
40,000 signatures, placing him well over that mark.

Tasini is Clinton’s only primary opponent
and has been outspoken in his opposition
to the Iraq War, which Clinton has
consistently supported. By shutting Tasini
out of the debate, NY1 is limiting the
discussion of important viewpoints and
ultimately limiting voter choice.

ACTION: Call NY1 and demand that they
remove their requirement that candidates
raise or spend a large amount of money in
order to participate in televised debates.

CONTACT:
Robert Hardt
NY1, Director of Politics
  <mailto:Robert.Hardt@ny1news.com> Robert.Hardt@ny1news.com
212-379-3330

<http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=165988495&url_num=16&url=http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=5> CounterSpin

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