NBC executives had been preparing to handle 20 presidential candidates over two nights of debate when the current occupant of the Oval Office introduced a new twist by threatening to live-tweet next week’s Democratic face-off.
President Donald Trump was always sure to loom over the first official debate of the 2020 primaries as all the Democratic contenders seek to contrast themselves with him. He’s giving rare access to both Telemundo and NBC in the days leading up to the debate and could make news during the event as well.
That raises the specter of moderators asking candidates to respond in real time to something Trump tweets or seeing him distract from the carefully staged event.
“I’m pleased that the president is going to be watching and promoting the event,” Rashida Jones, senior vice president of specials at NBC News, told POLITICO in an interview. “But our focus is on the candidates and how they plan to lead America.”
The Democratic primary debates will play an outsized role this year, with an enormous field that has mostly struggled to break through with voters. Campaigns have desperately tried to meet the thresholds to participate in the biggest televised event so far in the 2020 cycle, and candidates — especially those at the bottom of the polls — will want to make the most of their opportunity on the national stage.
Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow and José Díaz-Balart have a challenging assignment in keeping tabs on 10 candidates each night, while addressing complex issues at the top of Democratic voters’ minds, such as climate change, in a setting more suited to catchy one-liners.
“Five moderators, 10 candidates is not ideal,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, who worked on 10 primary debates as an NBC News executive and now serves as dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University.
“It’s not an ideal way to introduce candidates to the American public,” he added.
Trump nabbed the most debate speaking time amid a crowded Republican field in 2016. Moderators will have to be vigilant to make sure Democratic candidates eager for attention aren’t hogging time or derailing the event by interjecting out of turn.
Jones wouldn’t address which topics the moderators will focus on or discuss how they’ll manage speaking time among the panels of 10 candidates who will be on stage each night.
The goal for NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, which are jointly hosting the debate, is “ensuring that we hear a variety of points of view and perspectives” from the candidates, Jones said, with moderators drilling into issues that Democratic primary viewers and voters have said are most important to them.
Major breaking news, such as an escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions, could always shake up the best-laid debate plans. Jones stressed that the debate team will keep tabs on the news cycle and bring in an immediate issue if it’s relevant.
And, she said, “we want to make sure we have some level of decorum so we hear from everyone up there.”
Former network executives and moderators see a number of challenges for the NBC team when the Democratic field takes the stage in Miami next week.
“If you do the math and multiply the potential topics by the number of candidates, you have a two-week long television program,” said Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president who is now working on projects related to the future of journalism at MIT Media Lab and the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
One organizing principle for debates, Heyward said, is “to identify a handful of key issues and really give the candidates a chance to explore those.”
Democratic primary voters in polls have stressed the importance of knowing where candidates stand on health care, jobs and the economy, climate change and gun policy.
But even if candidates are addressing climate change, said Lukasiewicz, “the moderators are not going to want to go around the horn to have the same question answered 10 times.”
Lukasiewicz recalled intensive preparation before NBC debates that not only included the moderators, but also journalists with expertise on subjects ranging from justice to foreign affairs to immigration. “You don’t want to eat up time,” he said. “You want questions to be specific as possible and direct as possible.”
David Gregory, a former host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” who has moderated debates for the network, said that “what you’re trying to do is to get them to engage each other.”
While every candidate will be called on, the top-tier contenders at the center of the stage — Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the first night and former Vice President Joe Biden on the second — typically get the most attention. Gregory recalled trying to make Mitt Romney the focal point during a 2012 Republican debate, given his standing atop the polls. “I wanted to facilitate these other candidates to go after him and have him respond to them,” Gregory said.
During that same debate, Gregory recalled some Republican candidates coming up to him during the commercial break to “work the ref,” arguing that they weren’t getting enough time to respond to questions.
Republican candidates have been known to complain when the cameras are on, too, with Newt Gingrich blasting CNN’S John King in 2012 and with 2016 contenders treating the moderators as surrogates for the news media as a whole. Trump particularly clashed with John Harwood of CNBC during a debate in 2016, declaring one line of inquiry “not a very nice question.”
“I think if a moderator asked a question that’s deemed to be unfair, I imagine the candidate will stand up to him or her,” said Heyward, adding that he didn’t expect the “hostile lashing out” that’s occurred at some Republican debates.
While the moderator job carries prestige and offers a high-profile opportunity for a journalist to prove his or her mettle, Heyward said that in this “toxic, polarized era,” there is greater scrutiny over perceptions of bias and ability to follow up.
This election cycle, he added, “being a debate moderator is the thankless job everybody is lining up to get.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/21/nbc-presidential-debates-2020-1375093
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The Article Was Written/Published By: mcalderone@politico.com (Michael Calderone)
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