CNN faked debate
 

CNN Says It Planted Question in Debate
Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A college student who asked the Democratic presidential candidates at a debate whether they preferred the PC or Mac format for their computers says the question was planted by CNN.

The news network on Tuesday acknowledged that a producer went "too far" in telling Brown University student Alexandra Trustman what to ask.

CNN televised the debate, co-sponsored by the nonprofit Rock the Vote organization, last week. It was billed as an event geared to the interests of young people.

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said the cable network regrets the producer's actions. She would not identify the employee.

"In an attempt to encourage a lighthearted moment in this debate, a CNN producer working with Ms. Trustman clearly went too far," she said. All of the other questions from the audience originated from the person asking them, she said.

In an editorial written for the Brown Daily Herald, Trustman said she was called the morning of the debate and given the topic of the question CNN producers wanted her to ask.

Trustman said she was "confused by the question's relevance," and constructed her own question "about how, if elected, the candidates would use technology in their administrations."

But when she arrived in Boston for the debate, Trustman wrote, "I was handed a note card with the Macs and PCs version of Clinton's boxers or briefs question" and told she couldn't ask her question "because it wasn't lighthearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions."

She referred to a 1992 student forum where Bill Clinton was asked what kind of underwear he preferred.

A message left Tuesday for Trustman was not immediately returned and she did not respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press. A woman who answered Trustman's phone said Trustman did not want to comment.


Article

I was insulted when I heard this...
 

So CNN basically thinks students and young people are not smart enough to ask their own questions? Bullcrap. I hate CNN. If they want to see what the concerns of the x and y generations are, they should host the debate. If they are going to feed questions and "market" them to look like our concerns, it is just a huge waste of time and money. What a load of sh!t. I am pissed at the students in the mock "debate" for not saying"screw it" and asking their own questions... what a load of crap.

Bump... anyone? anyone? No one is mad that CNN thinks we cannot ask our own questions at a presidential debate? That CNN and MTV are getting kudos for "reaching out" to the youth, while all along puppeting the whole ordeal? Have you no concern?

of course not.

But if it was Fox News, all hell would be breaking loose.

Kitso
KS 361 times you know it's true

Why didn't the student grow a pair and ask the question she planned on asking anyway? I mean what could they do - throw her out? If they had, they would had to have explained why.

I don't know why anyone is shocked at this.

and as stated before, use of the term "x generation" is cause for dismissal from this forum. Please delete your GC account immediately.

Sorry, geez don't get so angry.. I wasn't aware.. why anyway??? But it pisses me off that we just stand here and say, "who is suprised by this" I agree... she should have growna pair and done something!! darn it.

Welcome to the world of politics. Check your morals at the door.

Don't be so hard on CNN. Perhaps they didn't want to confuse the participants with legitimate questions.

i have to agree with senitments thats this is nto cool...why would they have to feed information for a question..the whole idea of a debate is to allow for people to ask questions...CNN controlling whats asked does bother me...ugh.

Unethical
 

We were actually discussing this in my broadcast journ. class today. Even the professor -- who is the ultimate lib! -- said it was unethical. Shame on CNN.

Reminds of a few years ago when the local oldies radio station had a Sunday morning remember when song request. A friend called up to request 1 song and the dj asked him if he would specifically ask for another song (since that was the song the dj had planned). I quit trusting him after that.

Re: Unethical
 

Haha, for some reason this made me laugh.

I don't see what this has to do with politics -- just with the stupidity of the news networks.

I agree with 33girl. Why didn't the girl just ask the original question anyway?

And I don't really see the humor in the Mac/PC debate. It can't really be compared to underwear.

Maybe folks are blowing this thing a little out of proportion? If it were a question with a political slant, that's one thing. This, however, was unrelated.

Not a big deal in my mind.

The debate did end up discussing political issues, yes?

I will tell you the reason it deals with politics...
 

B/c CNN is a hyper-liberal news organization that is constantly blaming others for misleading the public with biased reporting. CNN is adamantly against the Bush campaign, and will do just about anything to see that it is portrayed in a distasteful manner. That said, the girl SHOULD have made her OWN question up. She shouldn't have even attempted to turn her question into what they wanted. The boxers/briefs - PC/MAC questions are irrelevant to this issue. The issue is that CNN thinks they can deceive the youth of our nation by collaborating w/ MTV and the stupid-ass "ROCK THE VOTE" crap, and we will think their job is done. Meanwhile, they try to pull a fast one on us by manipulating the questions that we want asked, make us look like a bunch of slack-ass pansies, and the majority of us say, "HEY, Whats the big deal? Who cares? Lets smoke pot." So here is the problem... If you don't care about this... don't EVER complain about ANYTHING media/political/social again. EVER. The media is the one thing that forms opinion in this nation. It is solely responsible for reporting what WE think. And we just sit back and say, "Doesn't suprise me" Well screw that. I AM suprised, and I care. Did anyone hear the NPR show "This Democracy" with Mo Rocca? Well, could you tell the difference in the students who cared and those that were indifferent.. I could, they pissed me off. While this isn't a conservative/liberal debate, it is one that we need to look into. If you get a chance to be in any form of debate, and someone tells you to ask a certain question, DON"T.

I think you paint CNN as a bit more liberal than it actually is (if it actually is).

They seem to go through a lot of effort not to push an agenda. However, it's unavoidable for the news media, in general to do this. CNN has to choose to cover certain stories. You'd really be surprised if you knew exactly how much stuff they put out. Not even a fraction of it ever makes it onto your TV screen. CNN's producers and your local news producers make that determination.

Often, they make that determination based on what they think you think is important. When you can only run 4-5 1-2 minute packages per newscast, you have a lot to choose from. In some cases you have liberal-minded folks that think you think what they think is important is important (follow?)

The process by which the media only covers certain things, conscious or not is known as agenda setting and it is widely studied in the communications/broadcasting field.

Take Fox News though, they are the only network with a decided agenda. For the most part, I guess you could call me a conservative-libertarian.. I watch and agree with many things that Fox does. Do I think it's the most credible/unbiased news source? Heck no.

It is virtually impossible to look at any news story and not be able to find some kind of bias. It may be consistant, it may be accidental, it may be on purpose. It's your job as an educated person to take the information they give you and form your own opinions. If you're interested in a topic, seek out more than one source.

When time for a broadcast is limited as it is and always will be, these problems will exist. I wouldn't get worked up about them, there will never be a "perfect" newscast.

Ditto ktsnake.

I think that's the first time we have agreed with anything, ever. :p

NO NO NO...


You are understanding my point. This isn't another Fox/CNN battle. It doesn't matter whether they are liberal/conservative/balanced/etc. They are putting words into the mouths of the Youth, and it pisses me off. Please, if you have not, read the initial article. I agree with what you wrote ktsnake, but it does not address the problem. This was not a newscast, it was a "DEBATE"... Not only a debate, but one that was marketed as being a free forum debate that was enabled so that the Youth of our country could voice their concerns... The they go and pass out questions and tell the kids to ask those? What is that??? That is not legit. No matter what way you look at it. This is VERY unethical, and CNN is being called out by a lot of the other news stations for what they did. I think it is important to care about this. Very important. If you don't, you have absolutely NO right to complain about anything politically related.. WHy? because this is the only excepted way to voice out opinions as young americans, and CNN stripped us of that right. How else are you supposed to ask the PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDIATES any serious questions? They don't answer to activists directly... Do you see what I mean?

And how is CNN putting words into the mouths of the youth?

Are they holding guns to heads now, did I miss something?

Weren't you the person that was all up in arms because CNN was supposedly late on reporting on a certain topic?

It seems that maybe you have some sort of agenda...

Okay, did you read the article? Yes I do not like CNN, but I specifically stated that this is not to do with my dislike of CNN. If one of the big 3 were to do this, I would be just as mad... They put the words in mouth by handing out stupid questions. I get mad about things like this not only b/c it happens, but also b/c the young people don't seem to care.. Do you understand? WHO CARES IF IT WERE CNN, MSNBC, FOX or whoever... IT DOESN"T MATTER. I DO have an agenda... To inform the presidential candidates that WE DO CARE about issues other than boxers/briefs-PC's/MACS.

Caps lock = broken big guy.

Also, because you have said agenda, you might be more up-in-arms about this issue, but don't be upset if others aren't.

I don't care which news outlet it is, it doesn't much matter just as you have stated.

Simply put, people might not feel the same way you do.

Okay, sorry, maybe I am getting to defensive damasa, but do you see the point I am trying to make? I will drop it b/c this isn't the best place to dscuss this stuff I guess. People don't have to get as angry as I do, but I feel like they should care. I guess that is all I am saying. Thanks for at least showing concern...

Read the article its pretty straight forward.

I understand where you are coming from and I totally see your point, on many levels.

To be honest, yes I'm a bit worried about it myself but I was more or less observing that I don't think many people on GC consider it a big deal. I just didn't want you to waste too much energy of thought on it.

Also, to be honest, I'm sure quite a few people on this site actually do care but just don't intend to speak up about it, you know?

But wasn't the "boxers or briefs" question that Bill Clinton was asked a plant also?

True... Thanks

I'll say again, the girl should have just asked her original question, because what were they going to do if she did? If "the youth" are so cowed by the big media outlet that they won't do what they know is right, that isn't CNN's problem.

As I said before, this doesn't have to do with politics. That's why I was surprised that you brought politics into it.

The problem is this: this isn't all that surprising because I'm sure things like this happen fairly often. It's just that this time they got caught. It's not that people don't care, it's just that they're not surprised.

My point entirely

CNN probably thinks EVERYONE is too stupid to formulate their own questions. They just screwed up by attempting that at Brown.

My guess is that this is not just a CNN thing. Everyone probably feeds questions to people. Not a great thing, but I don't see why some people are interpreting it as a liberal conspiracy.

THis will be my last post here, I gotta go, but I strongly feel the need to defend my point. Okay, here it goes...

I guess I what I meant by political, is that this occured during a Presidential Candidate Debate. I do not mean that the conservatives and liberals need to debate this. I felt as though CNN manipulated the debate by formulating their own questions for the students to ask, and the democratic candidates to answer. This is what was leaked by the Brown student, not made up by me. I hope to all that is holy that this does NOT happen a lot. I do not think it does. I do not think that major panel debates are governed by the networks handing the questions out beforehand. I don't think that the person hosting the debates would stand for that. I feel that the MTV Rock the Vote debates are different, and it angers me. These types of debates make us look rather dumb, like we really care about their underwear or computer choice. They all sit around w/ their sleeves rollled up like it is a grand old time. I want them to face the REAL questions we have. Affirmative Action, Abortion, things that affect OUR lives. Usually, the debates are free flowing. All types of difficult questions are asked. I feel as though the students were "cowed" into submission by thinking the questions are always handed out each time. Therefore, they were not permitted to ask the candidiates the questions they wanted b/c they were scared of going against what CNN told them to do. They were most likely nervous to be on national TV, and nervous to be speaking w/ such high profile Politicians. I would be nervous too. I am happy that you all care about this, I just don't understand why it doesn't bother some. I am over it though, and I will continue to care. Again, this isn't really an anti CNN thing. It is the action they chose to make that upsets me so much. That is what gets me riled up. I want to assure you that I would be just as angry if CBS did this... and I love CBS.