No candidate should be elected who is willing to endorse and support “closed door” access to government, or to elections by which selective politics can be accomplished.

Today’s technology allows free broadcast of porn, but not of politics.

Internet is the least expensive method of providing full service access, both domestically and internationally, since surely there are many outside the nation who would also want to view the broadcasts.
What good is public television is the nation’s most essential processes occur behind closed doors?

It is disgraceful not to use available technology to share American government with its citizens without requiring them to buy it.

In a democracy, this should work the other way around. For example. Say the establishment that controls the debate rules wants to axe Ron Paul from the next debate. The media should arrange a boycott amongst themselves so no one can watch the insider love fest. To have something 180 degrees from correct shows that this debate system needs redone from a clean slate.

Some complain about too many ‘third tier’ candidates in the debates. But it was Ron Paul that made the last one worth watching. As H. Ross Perot did before. Once the third tier stop showing up, you may as well plug your ears to election coverage until the polling data comes out a week before the primary.

Do you really think the budget would have been balanced if it were not for Perot getting into double digits in the ‘92 election? It is really the third tier that makes the difference at this stage. If they broke the debates into a debate amongst the top three, and another for all the others. If you would choose to watch the top three debate? I bet you like to watch paint dry too.

On the other hand I would like to make the point that while the American public has a right to the presidential debates, true debates between all candidates are not carried on any network or station. A debate between Democrats or Republicans or both vs. each other represents such a narrow political spectrum that I do not believe it is worth watching in the first place (alebit, I do). It is predictable rhetoric of an elite financed by special interest. In a twisted sense, these parties have bought their own airtime.

What is needed is what you will find in most European countries: Free debates with time for all candidates from all parties on a public network.

As long as commercial interest is intertwined with the prevalent politertainment, the American people are neither being informed nor given the opportunity to make a choice. The last thing those candidates want you to hear is discourse outside the parameters they and the network producers have hatched. Why else do you think do you never hear a really hard-hitting question?

It’s just one of the countless ways that the public has been conspicuously disenfranchised.

Guess who owns the footage from government proceedings???

CSPAN is a PRIVATE ORGANIZATION and COPYRIGHTS their material. You are not allowed to rebroadcast, or edit and show C-Span footage.

C’mon guys — write your congress and senate reps — this is absurd. They are very frightened with what will happen if we start editing together their footage and make them look bad. It’s time we move past the glamor and tricks of television and “the people” start taking advantage of modern communications media to further discussion debate and progress in this country.

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has been around for years for a reason — it’s time (and I say this as a “small government” Republican) — it’s time for the feds to record and release publicly all public government proceedings.

As to whether the “public” or MSNBC owns this televised debate:

I think it promotes democracy for TV channels to carry the debates because TV is still the most pervasive media. However, due to the low ratings of debates, advertisers don’t pay squat for time during a debate. Thus, carrying a debate in prime time costs a TV channel plenty. To ensure that MSNBC and other channels that do money-losing broadcasts of political debates, and thus promote democracy, the channels should have a right to find other ways to monetize the broadcast. One way is through the pre-roll advertisements on the internet streams of the debates.

Again, where’s the harm if the debate has been made freely available on the Internet, as in this case?

Nothing is more important to a bureaucracy than customer service standards. Undoubtedly the customer service metric that should have the greatest weight in a customer service performance index is the human touch. Steve Portigal offers an insightful p…

As Jeff Jarvis points out over at the Buzz Machine, MSNBC has placed a very restrictive license on their video coverage of tonight’s Democratic primary debate.
Regardless of your opinion on the usefulness of political debates (especially at this early…

They are on YouTube… for now, eh?

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bigpebble47

Three clips:
Response to terroris attack
Abortion
Is the War Lost

I’m sure more will be up there…

An unobstructed onscreen credit “MSNBC” must appear during each debate excerpt and remain on screen for the entire excerpt.

MSNBC… NBC…stand for we learn slow.