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Revealed: What CNN Is Planning For Tonight’s Debate Could Mean BIG Fireworks
CNN wants the sparks to fly at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, and is doing everything it can to make that happen.
Debate moderator Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, contrasted the CNN philosophy with that of Fox, which, in the first GOP debate, kept the dialogue between candidates and moderators.
“My goal is more about: Let’s draw the contrasts between the candidates, and have them fight it out over these policies, over who has the best approach to Putin, over who has the best approach to taxes, over who believes what over immigration reform,” Tapper said, adding that he wants a Lincoln-Douglas style debate to emerge among candidates.
“Our whole approach is sparking a debate,” said Dana Bash, CNN’s chief political correspondent. Bash and Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, will also be asking questions. “If someone says something that cries out for an obvious follow-up with someone who clearly disagrees or someone who is dying to get in, let it happen. Let the debate be a debate.”
“Jake Tapper is going to do whatever he can to get the candidates to go after each other,” a strategist advising a candidate, who declined to be named, told the New York Times. “If somebody is knocked out, CNN will be happy. In the first debate, the moderators controlled the candidates; in this debate, the candidates will have to moderate themselves.”
Bash said that although Donald Trump is at center stage, the debate is about more than the Republican front-runner.
“Part of it is putting him through the rigor,” Bash said, “but it’s also remembering that this is not a Donald Trump interview — this is a debate among 15 candidates over the course of many hours.”
“It’s not all about making sure that you press Donald Trump on X, Y and Z,” she added. “It’s maybe pressing him on X because another candidate thinks Y and there’s a genuine disagreement.”
In another difference from the first debate, when Fox urged the audience to respond, CNN is asking the debate’s audience members to restrain themselves.
“When the audience is cheering, the debaters also function differently because they start to play to the crowd and the volume of the candidates increases as the crowd continues to cheer,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar of presidential debates. Those cues, she added, “can really impact candidates, what they say, how they say it and more importantly the response of the audience at home.”
h/t: The New York Times
Source: http://www.westernjournalism.com/revealed-what-cnn-is-planning-for-tonights-debate-could-mean-big-fireworks/
