The Daily Background

Tim Russert was recently on Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes ‘ promoting his book was asked whether or not Democrats should participate in a Fox News debate in September.

Russert answered: “It’s a TV show. If you can’t handle TV questions, how are you going to stand up to Iran, and North Korea, and the rest of the world?”

Just as Fox News wanted him to, Russert either completely misses the point, or pretends to. This is not a matter of Democrats being afraid to debate on Fox News– that’s just the Fox spin. This is a matter of Democratic candidates refusing- boycotting a network which claims to be unbiased but exists to trash Democrats in unfair ways, lie, and spread inaccurate partisan attacks on anybody who isn’t conservative.

“The questions,” Russert said, “When you go back and read the transcripts [that Fox News hosts ask] are not al that difficult.”

The kind of questions Fox News asks (the stupid hypothetical kind about terrorist attacks, or torturing people), are the type of questions that are designed specifically to make Democratic candidates look weak, and there’s no reason to subject themselves to it. Fox News defenders claim that Dems are missing a good opportunity to connect to voters by debating on Fox.

That’s not true at all. Fox’s audience is almost exclusively made up of die-hard Republicans who are grossly malinformed about the state of America. Democrats debated on Fox News in 2004 and a fat lot of good it did them. Only 7% of Fox News viewers voted for John Kerry in ‘04. 88% voted for Bush. Check out this chart I made in March:

Debating on Fox simply is not worth the time it takes to prepare for.

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