FoxNews is the main sponsor of the upcoming Iowa Republican presidential debate being held on August 11th in conjunction with the Ames straw poll. Going into the debate they laid out some basic rules, in conjunction with the Iowa Republican Party, for who could participate. Candidates had to be:
"1. Registered with the Federal Elections Commission as a presidential exploratory committee or presidential campaign
2. Meet all U.S. Constitutional requirements
3. Garnered at least an average of one percent in five national polls based on most recent polling leading up to the registration day."
Pretty straightforward stuff. And based on these criteria I was one of many who assumed that New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson would be included in the debate. In the polls of declared candidates which have included him during the past month he has scored 1% or more and he obviously meets the other requirements.
Yet today the FoxNews website suggests that Johnson will not be included in the debate, saying:
"Johnson's low poll numbers make him ineligible for next week's Fox News debate in Iowa. He wasn't allowed to participate in CNN's New Hampshire debate either. The latest polls show him with less than 1 percent of voters."
Yet, as was the case with the last New Hampshire debate, the only basis on which Johnson can reasonably be said to not meet these criteria is if you count him as failing to receive 1% or more in polls in which he was not actually included as an option, and in those polls results like "someone else" get 2% or more, suggesting that participants might have selected Johnson had they been given the option.
If you look at the actual polls taken during the month of July (there have been no polls in August) there were 9 major polls conducted and here is how Johnson fared:
PPP - Not Included
Rasmussen - Not Included
Pew - Not Included
Gallup - Not Included
CNN - 1%
Fox - 1%
ABC - Not Included
NBC - Not Included
Quinnipiac - Not Included
So in the only polls where he was included he received 1%, including in Fox's own poll. But since only two polls asked about him it was impossible for him to have 5 qualifying polls. It's also troubling that many of these polls included as yet undeclared candidates like Thadeus McCotter or Rick Perry but left Johnson out, despite the fact that he is actively fundraising and campaigning and has an established nationwide following.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - John H.
Any suggestions on what we might do to put pressure on Fox News to include Gary Johnson in the upcoming debate?
2 - natschultz
They did the exact same thing to Ron Paul last time around - The Dems (Mainstream media) labeled him a "racist" when they realized his TRUE anti-war stance put Obama at risk, and Fox totally blackballed him from the network.
The irony is that Fox actually criticized CNN for excluding Johnson from the last debate based on such crummy criteria.
I say Pawlenty should be excluded - that guy has not gotten over 3% in any poll, yet it is IMPOSSIBLE to watch any cable news channel without seeing him on virtually every single day!
3 - Kris Keller
I fully agree with everything in the article,I lean even more so toward the cospiracy theory.This is an outrage,after cnn excluded Gary from their debate,Fox news came around acting like they give a damn,interviewing him everywhere,all the while,stabbing hm in the back.What can we do to stop the mainstream media from picking and choosing who they want us to see,and who's ideas they want us to hear,by continously excluding the most qualified man for the position?
4 - RJ
Thadeus McCotter declared already.
5 - RJ
When was he labeled a racist? I haven't heard that one.
6 - Dave Nalle
I think McCotter hadn't declared at the time of the only poll which includes him.
Dave
7 - Baronius
I'm with this article through the first page, but after that things go sour. Remember the Beatles' song "Revolution". Extremism alienates people. This is something the Ron Paulers never understood - although, to be fair, no one understands it when they first get involved in politics. People get involved out of idealism, and when that idealism isn't satisfied it turns into disillusionment.
It's up to the candidate and his supporters to make the campaign so big that even political reporters can't miss it. Political reporters are tiny people who live sheltered lives, always 18 months behind every emerging trend. These are people who think that Rosie O'Donnell was pretty cutting-edge on The View. Every candidate has to overcome them, and if your guy can't, he's not going anywhere. But don't convince yourself that they're conspiring against you. They're not. They're too lazy.
8 - Dan
While there were empty threats, Ron Paul was never excluded from the debates back in 2008. He's gotten much better treatment than Johnson has. And I think the media enjoys putting him on TV moreso than Johnson because at least Ron brings and ratings and can be labeled a nut by maintstream media types. Gary Johnson is less well known, but comes across much more credible because, unlike Ron Paul, he has actual executive experience that allows him to articulate how he would actually put libertarian ideas into real public policy. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is too theoretical, and too easily sidetracked by peripheral issues such as the NAFTA Superhighway or whether we should have fought the Civil War. This undermines his credibility and the ability of regular people to take him more seriously.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius #7 -
Well said.
10 - Dave Nalle
Dan, I think you've got it right. The idea of Johnson as a Republican is a lot more intimidating than Ron Paul because he's harder to dismiss as just a fringe candidate. It's quite possible the media wants Paul to remain prominent because they think it weakens the Republican party as a whole.
Dave
11 - zingzing
baronius: "Political reporters are tiny people who live sheltered lives, always 18 months behind every emerging trend."
do you believe that? if so, do you think yourself ahead?
12 - zingzing
if you think yourself a year and a half ahead, i wonder what your take is, baronius. where's the heat? gimme the pulse. is it all right wing? i'd bet it is.
13 - El Bicho
What political reporter thought Rosie O'Donnell was pretty cutting edge?
14 - RJ
Rosie's cutting edge, cutting remarks spice up The View
Although technically David Bauder isn't a political reporter; he's a media reporter who just writes a lot about politics.
15 - Baronius
Zing, after the 2010 elections I was saying that President Obama was going to have a rebound, in fact already had started to, and the evidence was the fact that the press was saying he was declining in popularity. It doesn't matter whether the next big thing is from the right, left, or middle, the press isn't going to figure it out until it's been around for a while.
Look at their reporting about the debt limit deal. They believed the August 2nd deadline. They bought the totals that were being bandied around, not mentioning that they were estimated changes in the base-line budget over ten years. Today they're saying that our debt rating was lowered because of the length and heatedness of the negotiations, but not because of the results.
16 - handyguy
Political pundits don't monolithically say the same thing. And some are obviously smarter and more interesting than others. I don't know where Baronius gets his news, but I doubt he actually reads political pundits regularly -- thus the ridiculous and counterfactual generalization.
To name just one, Ezra Klein [Washington Post/Bloomberg/MSNBC] wrote excellent coverage of the debt crisis that does not conform to Baronius's caricature in the least.
And it was S&P themselves who gave primarily a political reason for the downgrade: they believe the political stalemate/paralysis in Washington makes meaningful action difficult or impossible.
Of course, the real impact of the S&P action came yesterday: as investors sold massive amounts of stocks they were buying...massive amounts of US Treasuries, driving the interest rates on those bonds to record lows. That's right -- S&P's downgrade actually helped the market for the bonds that were downgraded.
17 - Baronius
Zing, just in case I didn't fully articulate my point, let me add something. I don't think that I'm prophetic. I hope that I see politics objectively (although I have subjective feelings about it too). If something happens today, I'll try to understand it. The press, due to its laziness, bias, and orientation toward entertainment over fact, has created a barrier between itself and objective analysis that prevents it from appraising a development quickly, or sometimes at all.
18 - handyguy
That's nonsense. You'd have to read the press to have an informed opinion about it. From the evidence of your comments on here, I don't believe you do. You talk about "the press" as if it's all one entity.
19 - Baronius
Well, yes, Handy, it is a generalization. But I think it's apt.
As for Standard & Poors,
"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics.
"More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011."
20 - KrisKeller
Gary Johnson for President 2012,is THE BEST MAN FOR THE JOBSSSSSS!
21 - handyguy
Well, as long as you think it's apt, then that's just hunky dory.
You still offer no evidence....because you don't consume much [any?] of what you are criticizing so inaccurately.
22 - Baronius
You're kidding, right? When I mention specifics, you tell me I'm nitpicking; when I speak generally, you complain about my lack of specifics. We've been talking about press bias for years on this site. From "straight" journalism to "opinion" journalism, to whatever you want to call Jon Stewart, we've talked about FNC, MSNBC, and CNN, the NYT editorial writers, the major networks' news broacasts, Newsweek and Time, Air America and Rush Limbaugh, and every other media outlet I can think of. I have had more conversations about specifics of press coverage of politics on this site than I've written about any other thing, anywhere (except for my Twilight/Buffy crossover fanfic - nothing surpasses my output there). I don't know what to say, Handy. You've left me baffled.
23 - handyguy
I believe you have beliefs about the press. I just don't think you read the press. If you do, then your perceptions about what is reported are warped, and the way you describe them on here is so caricatured as to be meaningless. Your comment #7 is absurdly off the mark, as zing pointed out.
The news reporting of, say, the NY Times may be biased from your point of view, but it certainly isn't '18 months behind.' The analysis of columnists varies widely in quality; there are good ones and bad ones. [I mentioned one very good one above; check him out.] So what's the point of making negative generalizations that cover all reporters and all columnists, as if they are all identical?
Citing a few actual examples of reporting or columns that are 18 months behind the trend would go a long way toward backing up your silly assertion.
24 - RJ
Handyboy's recommended columnist, Ezra Klein, thinks the Constitution is too hard to understand because it was written, like, 100 years ago or something.
25 - handyguy
RJ has at least one talent: for finding right-wing blog posts that slander liberals. Now actually reading any of Klein's columns and coming to his own conclusions...that would be too much work. And not so, um, har-har funny in , that chortling, creepy Rush Limbaugh kinda way.
On the evidence of Klein's columns and RJ's posts on BC, I would estimate Ezra's IQ to be, oh, 50-60 points higher.
The video clip which supposedly demonstrates Klein's inability to understand the Constitution is, of course, instead intended to refer to other people [Tea Partiers perhaps, who carry a copy around and treat it as scripture] who regularly misinterpret the document, their reading and comprehension abilities being, shall we say, limited.