Media killed the presidential debate  

It figures the establishment media are all demanding a series of debates before the presidential election this fall. The press always seems to be itching for a sensational spectacle, food fight, or “bloodbath” of sorts, to highlight its activist role in setting the news agenda, regardless of whether the public interest is served.  

There was a time when journalists observed and reported on the happenings in the world, serving as eyes and ears surrogates for the citizenry. Instead, a self-promoting media establishment now wants to insert itself into manufacturing and concocting story lines that reporters themselves can then cover as “news.”

The media industry of today is driven to make itself part of any national matter, as it did recently when a gang of news outlets issued a letter demanding that the presumptive presidential nominees, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, commit to televised debates in the fall. The statement was submitted by a dozen big media outlets, including ABC, CBS, the Associated Press, NewsNation, NBC, NPR, Fox News, and others.  

It is worth noting that the exhortation did not include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, or Jill Stein, who also want to be president. They might actually have some unique ideas that wouldn’t surface in a Biden-Trump exchange. Of course, those third-party candidates don’t count in the eyes of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which restricts the rhetorical sphere with its highly arbitrary “Nonpartisan Candidate Selection Criteria.” 

The missive was full of sanctimonious bombast about how televised presidential debates “have a rich tradition in our American democracy” and allow candidates to engage “in a competition of ideas.” The statement concludes by asserting “there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of the nation.” 

The reality is that these televised extravaganzas are not true debates anyway, but rather dueling press conferences in which the media panelists insist on being part of the show. Sadly, the journalist moderators are seldom up to the task, as evidenced by the performances of Kristen Welker and Chris Wallace in 2020.  

The debate formats, necessarily designed for a television audience with a short attention span, hardly allows for candidates to fully explain and provide nuance on complex issues such as the economy, border security or international tensions. But the media establishment loves the sound-bite atmosphere of these phony debates, along with the jump-in ratings and clicks associated with the circus. 

Television is a medium of emotion. Rational thinking is difficult to squeeze into a video monitor. The last thing this nation needs is more shrill hyper-emotion in its political discussion. Biden-Trump debates would scarcely be enlightening on any level, given that Americans already know all they want to know about two of the most flawed candidates in the nation’s history.

If televised Biden-Trump debates should happen, voters and the world at large would observe a series of consultant-driven cheap shots, tall tales, angry rhetoric and incoherence — hardly “the competition of ideas” promoted in the media’s call for debates. The chaotic display would simply demoralize an already disgruntled electorate that is starving for sanity in the political process.  

History provides little evidence that televised presidential debates have ever turned an election. Perhaps the 1976 Carter-Ford debate boosted Jimmy Carter to victory, largely because of Gerald Ford’s misstatement about Soviet domination in eastern Europe. That result, ultimately, was probably not a good thing. Debates are so inconsequential in the larger electoral picture that Trump skipped all of the Republican primary debates this year and still cruised to his party’s nomination. Biden was generally considered the worst debater on the stage (with the possible exception of Kamala Harris) in the 2020 Democrat primary debates, but he easily won his party’s nomination anyway. 

A recent essay in the Columbia Journalism Review fretted that, should debates not happen this election year, the practice might never come back. That is a baseless fear. The problems with debates today are the format and their vacuous nature, not to mention the 2024 candidates themselves. A pause from presidential debating would give the nation an opportunity to reinvent the process and make it more substantial.

With Biden and Trump both out of the picture for the 2028 election, it is a sure bet that new party nominees would leap at the chance to be on a debate stage. In fact, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) already have debated.

Presidential politics over the years has already been reduced to social media outbursts, campaign stunts and countless horserace polls of minimal significance. Debates have been part of that sad rhetorical exercise. Should Biden and Trump eventually meet on a debate stage, it should happen for their own reasons — not because of a meddling media’s insistence. 

Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant.