Jeering at the Daily Record

by: DBK

Mon Oct 30, 2006 at 08:58:31 AM EST

In its Cheers and Jeers article of October 28, The Daily Record had this to say about Friday evening's debate between Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ-5) and Tom Wyka (D):

JEER: To the failure of last night's debate between Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, R-Harding, and his Democratic opponent, Tom Wyka, to be taped for cable television. The league and both parties should have figured out a way to get that down. The candidates disagree sharply on arguably the biggest issue in the country: the war in Iraq.

DBK :: Jeering at the Daily Record

Perhaps this was the Record's attempt at being non-partisan, but the Wyka campaign wanted the debate video-recorded and the League of Women Voters seemed to have no objection; the League's only condition was that any video-recording had to show the debate in its entirety, without editing, to maintain the integrity of the League, which is non-partisan. All blame lies with Rodney Frelinghuysen and his campaign. If there is any other party to blame, then blame the cable television outlets that didn't press the matter and blame The Daily Record, which is now critical of the lack of coverage of the event but did not send a reporter to cover it.

The debate was, partially, video-recorded by an outsider, who posted the portion he was able to capture, unedited, to Blip.TV. That video has been reposted here, at this web site.

The Record should know better before it assigns blame, and if the folks at the Record really think the debate ought to be viewed more widely, a premise with which I agree, they should tell their readers where to link to the video.

I find it pretty outrageous that the Record failed to cover that debate. They sent a free lance photographer, whom I spoke to briefly before the debate (didn't get his name, darn it), but did not send a reporter. The photographer took photos of the candidates and the moderator and then left shortly after the debate began. Where does the Record get off criticizing either candidate or the League of Women Voters when they didn't have a reporter there?

The only organization that covered the debate is Bluejersey. In this instance, citizen journalism scoops the "professionals" and the "professionals" are left picking motes out of other people's eyes.

UPDATE: The Record did do a story on the debate, though it was oddly hard to locate with a search on the Internet and was not picked up by Google under the News category. I don't know, however, if they sent a reporter there to cover the debate. She might have written the story off of the video. I'll have to check my notes on their answers against what was written in the article. At the end of the evening, the two candidates fielded the most significant question of the night: how to get out of Iraq. I forget what Frelinghuysen said, but Wyka referred specifically to Representative John Murtha in his answer. Nothing about that appears in the Record piece.