News outlets need to focus on all candidates

By Tyrone Barrozo, Columnist

Last Tuesday, the fourth Democratic primary debate took place in Ohio and featured 12 of the remaining candidates. However, most people might not have known that because, again, news outlets like CNN are pretty lazy when it comes to events that wouldn’t garner much attention on name recognition alone.

Just take a look at the post-debate coverage and you’ll manage to find much of the same nonsense peddled from the last debate: quips, one-liners, and yelling matches parading as debate skirmishes.

Keep in mind that this is not the first time that I’ve covered the DNC debates and lambasted the so-called “coverage” that took place for the event when it happened. In short, I think that it’s been so bad that I suggested that a comedian ought to be the moderator future debates—but only for the final presidential debates to get the most soundbites for the internet.

But, this time around, I wanted to briefly focus on why the DNC debate coverage from the very beginning was absolute trash and how we, as voting American citizens, ought to care and push for better coverage.

Now, to me, the argument is pretty clear: most, if not all, cable news networks have been covering these “debates” like they were sporting events. As a matter of fact, they’ve been doing even worse than that because with sports analysis, you have experts referencing statistics and a little bit more brain power put into measuring players’ strengths and weaknesses on the field. And because of this type of approach taken by these media outlets, it seems to me that the politicians have done nothing but obliged them lest they lose any crucial coverage for their campaigns. 

You can see this now in the rather noticeable lack of mention of the only Asian-American candidate, Andrew Yang, who arguably dictated crucial parts of last Tuesday’s debate. Yang brought up topics that none of the candidates were even mentioning until their campaign teams suggested it. Don’t worry if you still haven’t heard of him because, again, most mainstream media outlets have conveniently neglected to mention him. Most of the time, Yang isn’t even questioned in what seems to be an attempt to make him look like a fool or a token minority character on Fox’s latest hack sitcom coming next summer, and has left netizens to fill in the missing parts of a large dialogue.

While I’m on the topic of the internet’s involvement in spreading this crucial bit of news, blatant unapologetic click-baiting has taken place despite the chaos to the American political landscape over the last four years, including the DNC hacking scandal and Russia’s involvement and assistance to the GOP to get our current doofus in office. It’s really disheartening to see that American news outlets haven’t learned a thing since then and have sold out for a quick few bucks at the expense of society’s access to the truth and, ultimately, their privilege to speak out on such petty hackery.

If CNN wants to push Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, then they ought to tell it straight to the people. But to continue on and try to continue business as usual—much like the whole debacle with trying to throw Bernie Sanders under the bus against Hillary Clinton back in 2016—is just spitting in the face of those who are wary of the malicious shenanigans taking place.