Shame on the Des Moines Register

A letter published today in The Des Moines Register by veteran political journalist Doug Ireland blasts the corporate media for playing games with the presidential primary race. Ireland assails the Des Moines Register for excluding Mike and Dennis Kucinich during this week's debate in Iowa.

Ireland writes: "By denying the opportunity to speak to Kucinich and Gravel, you disenfranchise the two candidates' supporters across the country, sharply curtail the range of views and ideas available to all U.S. voters in the national TV audience, truncate the debate of ideas, skew the debate to the right, betray fundamental democratic principles, and deny the right to equal access by candidates to the public's airwaves."

The entire letter follows after the jump.

SHAME ON THE DES MOINES REGISTER FOR EXCLUDING KUCINICH AND GRAVEL!

To the Editor, Des Moines Register,

As a journalist who has covered politics for three decades, I was appalled to discover that you had excluded both Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel from your presidential debate when I tuned into it today.

Your rationale for so doing -- that neither man had an office in the state -- amounts to a monetary test of the worth of a candidate and of that candidate's ideas. Yet, in excluding these two men from the debate, you have eliminated the two candidates who most clearly and unambiguously express the views of the many voters in the left wing of the Democratic Party.

At the same time, yesterday you accorded a place in the Republican  debate you sponsored to a candidate infinitely more marginal than either Kucinich (left) or Gravel (right) -- both of whom have held high public office -- although Alan Keyes, who refuses to discuss the real issues in this campaign and answers every question with a formulaic religious response, has never been elected to anything in the several states in which he has presented himself before the voters for Senate. Can you really pretend that the exclusion of Kucinich and Gravel is fair, and not arbitrary and discriminatory, when you include Keyes?

All the nation is watching Iowa and its caucuses. You are not running some little local debate for which arcane local criteria should be used to impose a "means test" as to who can participate. Your amputated debate deprives Kucinich and Gravel of a chance to present their ideas to the viewers of CNN, MSNBC, and C-SPAN, all of which are airing the debate for a national audience. Moreover, as the last debate before the Iowa caucuses, this may be the best-watched debate nationally so far.

Your action in excluding Kucinish and Gravel was also a particular slap in the face to millions and millions of lesbian and gay Americans across the country, including in Iowa, for they are the only two candidates to support full marriage equality for same-sex couples.

By denying the opportunity to speak to Kucinich and Gravel, you disenfranchise the two candidates' supporters across the country, sharply curtail the range of views and ideas available to all U.S. voters in the national TV audience, truncate the debate of ideas, skew the debate to the right, betray fundamental democratic principles, and deny the right to equal access by candidates to the public's airwaves.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Sincerely, DOUG IRELAND