Must-Read: Ezra Klein: Were the Questions at CNBC’s Debate Really so Hostile?
Must-Read: As one moderately-senior editor once told me: “On an average day, I learn more from Ezra Klein than from their entire national news staff.” This is why:
: Were the Questions at CNBC’s Debate Really so Hostile?: “Fox News moderators were more aggressive in their questioning…
…and more focused on creating conflict–but… its choice of targets, and its angles of attack, suggested it had the GOP’s best interests at heart…. [In] CNN’s Republican debate… it was clear… that… tough questions were meant to strengthen the GOP…. CNBC… focus[ed] its debate around economic policy, and so its angles of attack reflected critiques of the candidates’ plans on taxes, immigration reform, monetary policy, and more. But since the candidates’ plans on those issues tend to broadly reflect Republican thinking on those issues, the questions put CNBC in opposition to the Republican Party broadly….
Ted Cruz… lamented that the moderators weren’t asking substantive questions, when the questions, up till that point, were more substantive…. But he was right that the questions were different from those asked by other networks, harder for the assembled candidates to answer, and more embarrassing for them to flub…. CNBC, in focusing on policy concerns, picked a more journalistically important line of questioning, but one that the organizing party found much more offensive. The resulting backlash is the organizing party’s effort to remind CNBC and all other networks that, ultimately, it controls these debates, and media organizations that want to host a debate and benefit from the accompanying ratings and the prestige need to remember that they are meant to act as the party’s partner in these debates, not as its critic.