Chicago: From its appearance, this will be the third straight US election that will see significant interference from the domestic corporate media.
Presidential debates have a long history in US politics. However, there is very little evidence to suggest that these televised debates significantly impact citizens’ voting choices. Moreover, they have lost charm and credibility over the years.
There has been a general decline in the viewership of traditional cable TV news over the past few years. Long-form podcasts and interviews on independent media have gained considerable ground within the last few years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic.
People looking for informed and alternative viewpoints have turned away from the legacy media as they find these outlets to be a propaganda arm of the US government, the progressive left, and the Democrat Party. Several eminent journalists—Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald, for example—have left the corporate media and found considerable success in the alternative media landscape.
Judging by how little the voters knew about VP Kamala Harris and her presidential platform, a glaring contradiction in what she has said and done in the past about policies, and the manner in which Democrat elites installed her as their candidate, there was a great deal of anticipation going into the 10 September presidential debate.
This was the second presidential debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle for Mr Trump. On the other hand, it was the first presidential debate for Ms Harris as the Democrats replaced Mr Biden after his devastating performance in the first one. However, most debate-watchers came out empty-handed from the Harris-Trump debate. The New York Times headline unambiguously described this mood: “Pundits Said Harris Won the Debate. Undecided Voters Weren’t So Sure.”
Political debates and disputations are signs of a healthy democracy. The US has a storied history of political debates. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of seven in 1858, for the US Senate seat in Illinois were of immense historical significance. Some of these debates had over 10,000 audience members as the two gentlemen argued their positions.
Before the advent of the Internet, the reach of social media, and access to transportation, navigating this country’s expansive length and breadth was challenging. The idea of a televised live debate between presidential nominees was revolutionary. In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off on live TV four times before the elections. Sixteen years later, in 1976, these televised debates became a staple of the US electoral process.
“Nothing that occurs during the 90-minute debate is going to change or influence who they’re going to vote for,” Aaron Kall, director of debate for the University of Michigan’s Debate Program, told ABC News. The media coverage of debates—pre-debate hypes and post-debate spins—often matters more than the debates themselves. According to Dustin Carnahan, assistant professor at Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts and Science, “the potential indirect effects of debates—by commanding significant media attention in the days prior to and after their occurrence—have offered stronger evidence of their influence.”
A good debate presupposes impartial and unbiased moderator(s). It also helps if a candidate does not have prior knowledge of the questions asked. One candidate’s selective advance knowledge of questions puts another candidate at a disadvantage. Donna Brazile, a former CNN contributor and acting Democratic National Committee chair, had provided questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of a town hall debate hosted by CNN during the Democrat Party’s presidential primary.
As the debate progressed, it became evident that the moderators were anything but “neutral.” David Muir, one of the moderators from the Harris-Trump debate, inserted himself in the debate several times. Consider the following full toss to Ms Harris from Muir:
“[Mr Trump] said he did not say he lost by a whisker. So, he still believes he did not lose the election. That was won by President Biden and yourself.”
Mark Penn and Andrew Stein watched the debate, reviewed the video, and compared their notes and became concerned that the ABC moderators may have “decided in advance they were going to ‘fact check’ Mr Trump but not Ms Harris.” Penn was a pollster and advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton and is currently the chairman of the Harris Poll. Stein is the former president of the New York City Council.
Ms Harris had free rein to level charges against Mr Trump and made full use of it. Her false claims that Mr Trump supports a national abortion ban and that he called the Charlottesville, Virginia, neo-Nazis “very fine people,” among many others, went unchallenged by the moderators.
From its appearance, this will be the third straight US election that will see significant interference from the domestic corporate media. The media propagated the Hillary Clinton campaign’s propaganda about Russians influencing the US elections to make Donald Trump president in 2016. In 2020, they refused to cover the true story about Hunter Biden’s (Democrat nominee Joe Biden’s son) abandoned laptop that contained some incriminating information against the Bidens.
ANOTHER HINDU MANDIR VANDALIZED IN THE U.S.
At the time of writing these pages, the news of another Hindu temple vandalization came to light. The signage of the BAPS Swaminarayan Temple in Melville, New York, was spray-painted with “threatening and derogatory anti-Hindu messages.” Messages included “Hindustan Murdabad,” “F*&# Modi”, etc.
Attacks on Hindu places of worship have become common in the US over the last couple of years. Hindu temples have been vandalized in California, New Jersey, and New York. Earlier this year, the entrance sign at Vijay’s Sherawali Temple in Hayward, California, was spray-painted with “Khalistan Zindabad” and hate-Modi phrases. A few days before, in the early morning hours of January 1, the Shiv Durga Temple of Santa Clara was burglarized. Cameras recorded three perpetrators stealing gold jewellery that adorned the temple’s vigrahas, plus donation boxes. In 2022, the perpetrators vandalised a Mahatma Gandhi statue at a Hindu Mandir in Richmond Hills, New York.
“At a very superficial level, (law enforcement is) just seeing, you know, one set of Indians attacking another,” Suhag Shukla was quoted in the media. “But let’s look at the target. If there is a group that is advocating for a separate state in the Indian subcontinent, why are they attacking Hindu temples? What does BAPS have to do with a separate theocratic state?” Shukla is the executive director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), the largest Hindu advocacy group in the US.
US House of Representatives member Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from the state of Pennsylvania, was “the first senior Member of Congress” to condemn the recent attack on the Hindu temple, according to a social media post by the HAF. Widespread bipartisan condemnation from several US politicians followed, including three of the five-strong members of the Samosa Caucus. “Freedom of worship is a bedrock of our democracy… We need accountability and to make sure this does not happen again,” Congressman Ro Khanna posted on his X handle.
Accountability, however, has been hard to come by. The inability of the state and federal law enforcement agencies to stop these hate crimes and their inability to bring the culprits to justice swiftly have angered Indian Americans. The reluctance of the political leadership to put pressure on agencies also plays a role. We have seen how BLM-Antifa criminals were allowed to riot across the US for months.
Some of the attacks on Hindus have alleged direct links to hyperactive pro-Khalistani groups in the US. The US authorities have allowed these groups to spew venom and hate against Hindus, India, and the members of the government of India in the name of “free speech.” Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a designated terrorist by the government of India, has been making public threats to Hindus, Indians, Prime Minister Modi, and the members and officers of his government. He also threatened to blow up transatlantic flights operating between North America and India. Pannun operates as the legal advisor and spokesperson of the secessionist group Sikhs for Justice.
Avatans Kumar is a Chicago-based award-winning columnist.