How NBC Changed ‘The Facts’ To Block Dennis Kucinich From The Nevada Debate

Nevada’s Supreme Court upheld NBC’s exclusion of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich from MSNBC’s Democrats’ debate. But the TV network’s own appeal to the court reveals that its managers changed the program’s qualification rules — a move that threw Kucinich off the program.

An NBC Emergency Petition’s “statement of facts” filed today admits that Kucinich may have qualified for the debate under the rules outlined by Democratic party consultant Jenny Backus. Those guidelines said that a candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in the New Hampshire primary or Iowa Caucus to participate in the January 15th debate.

A candidate could also qualify by being included “in the top four in one of six credible random-sample telephone national news media polls conducted since the Iowa Caucus.”

NBC’s statement acknowledges that in a Gallup Poll completed soon after the Iowa Caucus, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received the support of 33 percent of those polled, John Edwards obtained 20%, and Kucinich won 3%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson picked up only 1% of those surveyed.

NBC notes that “The poll had a margin of sampling error of +/- three (3) percentage points, thereby making it unclear as to whether Mr. Kucinich or Mr. Richardson finished fourth in the subject poll.” Despite this, NBC’s statement says that on January 9th, Backus emailed the Kucinich campaign, inviting the Ohio Congressmember to join the debate. A day later, Bill Richardson quit the race.

The next day, January 10th, NBC Political Director Chuck Todd rescinded the networks’ invitation. He explained that under NBC’s “revised debate criteria, Mr. Kucinich no longer qualified thereunder.”

“The revised criteria required that invited candidates must have finished first, second or third in either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire Primary,” NBC’s petition says.

“The revised criteria governing the January 15th debate are viewpoint neutral,” it concludes, “and are in no way designed to exclude an particular candidate based on his or her views. Instead, the revised criteria represent a good faith editorial choice of a privately-owned cable network to limit debate participants based on the status of their campaigns.”

NBC’s comments do not explain why the media company changed the debates’ admission rules five days before the scheduled event. Kucinich claimed that the move represented a breach of contract, an argument that the Nevada Supreme Court rejected.

Read NBC’s petition here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Don’t like having Democracy for sale? Boycott: GE (Owner of NBC) and Microsoft (co-owner of MSNBC) products.

Write the companies of your decision and back up those words like I am. We are in the process of looking for a new range and microwave. GE Profile WAS on the top of the list, but no longer is on the list. I emailed GE that fact.

The debates on msnbc, on Jan 15, were knee-deep in rhetoric. A debate panel without Dennis Kucinich lacks substance, and this continues to be the standard qualification. These debates(?) are nothing more than an opportunity for the top two candidates to continue promoting their sound-bites and voicing their meaningless blather. Minute for minute, John Edwards was short-changed. The process of elimination, save for the main stream corporate media choice of ‘viable’ candidate is clear and others become invisible and lose their voice. American voters have been shown the way to the back door and are expected to accept the desires and wishes of those who own our government.

There may be an obvious answer to this, considering how naive I am about the inner workings of broadcasting, BUT…why didn’t any of the other candidates demand that the contact between the network and Kucinich be honored?

In on-line polls, Kucinich won over both Clinton and Obama. SEVERAL polls, including one democratic poll with 150,000 people voting. ABC pulled the poll from their site when Kucinich won. This shows a clear purposeful (and wrongful) intent by the corporate television media to deny viewers to see or hear much of anything (besides snide remarks) of Congressman’s Kucinich’s platform. This shows that when people get their news from on-line sources, they are more informed and VOTE FOR KUCINICH hands down way ahead of the corporate-sponsored candidates. The media KNOWS this. If people hear him and everything he stands for, THEY WANT HIM. So they mute him. This is FASCISM. The United States of Fascism.

Friends,

Remember what the Republicans did to Al Gore during the unbelievable “chad” charade in 2000?

Are we now going to stand by and allow the media, i.e., Big Business, to manipulate election coverage? If so, then people won’t even be aware that the best candidate, Dennis Kucinich, is running for president in the 2008 elections?

Government of the People, for the People, by the People, not the Media. Remember?

Now. Where’s Kucinich? What will each of us do in the next 24 hours to support him?

It doesn’t always have to be about writing a check. Why not do some
research to become better informed about his amazing background.

Here’s a teaser: The Kucinich family was homeless for awhile and they lived in a car.

In the 70s, people taunted Kucinich when he ran for mayor of Cleveland in his early 30s. Well, he ignored them, campaigned, and won.

“Dennis Who?” helped turn the nearly bankrupt city around, and cleaned up Lake Erie, a dying cesspool,
when he became mayor.

Do you know he’s just a little guy, maybe 5 foot four or five? Right. A veritable Mighty Mouse.

He prays and meditates and truly believes that someday there will be world peace, and we won’t need to kill everyone off to achieve it.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a terrific piece on Kucinich and his fiance about three years ago. It’s a fascinating look at the man.

Find other credible sources to learn about his work as a senator. Then, when you’re having a conversation about the candidates, you’ll be able to talk in an informed–and persuasive– fashion about
Dennis Kucinich.

There’s nothing quite like grass roots and word of mouth to ensure that America remains of, for and by the People.

Well, you just can’t be on the same stage when you want to talk about impeachment, illegal/immoral wars, and the like. Clinton/Obama/Edwards just want to talk about “change” which is safe cause everybody “knows” there ain’t no change in all three of them put together.

Once I played silkroad, I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have silkroad gold. He gave me some sro gold.