Even though I counted myself out from watching the debate held by ABC News, many people did watch it. Many people claim ABC News was biased and didn’t adequately moderate the debate equally. The people have spoken (rather, commented), with more than 15,000 negative comments on the ABC News commenting section.
What I find surprising is that ABC News hasn’t responded to a windfall of comments from their viewers. A majority of the comments aren’t the usual vitriol targeted against candidates, rather the actual point of contention was focused on the debate that was facilitated by ABC.
Here are some of what ABC viewers had to say about their coverage:
“This was the most ridiculous debate I’ve ever seen. Thanks for treating the American people little children who can’t think about real issues.” — gtlogic 2:17 PM
“Yet another example of the mindless garbage-spewing mainstream media. Thanks for living up to the stereotype and low expectations once again ABC!” — Monode 2:16 PM
“Shame on you, ABC. Shame on the rest of the broadcast and cable news media, who are all circling the wagons to defend their brethren in the wake of this fiasco. Shame on the rest of us for not demanding a higher standard of journalism for the past two decades. This was truly, truly appalling.The news media seem to be far more out-of-touch with Americans than either of the candidates. If you have any journalistic integrity left, please start helping us to be good citizens. Give us substantive news! If I want an update on a horse race I’ll watch SportsCenter.” — highlander1297 2:16 PM
“HORRIBLE excuse for journalism. The first 45 minutes of the broadcast were intentionally focused on keeping alive old accusations and creating more controversy, whever possible. It had the smell of smear and character assassination, typically seen from Karl Rove’s camp and historically experienced from the Ken Starr and Joe McCarthy witch hunts.We, the public, understand that both these candidates have substantive information to deal with the critical issues that this country is now facing and that THEY are willing to share that material with us. The media should not interfere with that effort by inserting it’s agenda of sensationalism.Shame on ABC “news”.” — Citizen of our Republic 2:12 PM
One of the challenges faced with news-related community experiences is the “drive-by” commenters poised against the heavily-engaged users who want a deep discussion. The community features are provided by Prospero, in my experience, they create absolutely atrocious for community experiences for users and administrators.
News communities need to have editorial control, threaded discussions and ratings. Editorial control would include moderating the trash from being posted in addition offer editors an “elitist” way to respond and interact with users so people can easily tell they are interacting with a moderator or content publisher. Threaded discussions include the ability to quote and repond back to a comment posted by another user including the ability to indent responses so people can visually track the discussion and choose where they wish to interact.
Will ABC respond? We shall see, although I doubt it, large homogenous traditional TV networks particularly don’t care what their viewers think. Instead, they just watch the page views and Nielsen ratings drop.
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