Independent parties debating?

[pato64]

so I've heard non-Democrat/Republican presidential candidates say the news media is owned by the two major parties, and that's why they can't debate. They've said that it's cheating to exclude them so often. I really haven't seen much coverage on them, and natrually I think people do not even know there are other people running for president aside from Barack Obama and John McCain.

Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party canidate, is running for president with a women vice president on the same ticket. Anyways, do you think the news companies are being unfair? Should there be more than two people at the debate?

What if Pico ran for president and he couldn't debate for a stupid reason? We'd have to do something drastic then, wouldn't we? >:D

[kraor024]

Did you know that neither the Democratic nor the Republican parties filed on time to be on the Texas ballot Barr tried to have them removed but the Texas supreme court ruled against it.

[RandomFreak]

I don't think it's media bias that keeps indepedents away, I think it's funding. To be blunt it's been extremely rare that a 3rd party candidate has ever had enough financial backing to ever be a credible candidate for the presidency. If they could afford ads on TV then the media wouldn't be able to ignore them. But they can't. With all due respect to 3rd parties, until one of them has the backing to really make themselves known it's kind of a waste of time to cover them because they would never have a prayer at winning.

[kraor024]

Arn't there laws requiring equal time for each of the two major parties for a T.V.network.

[MortifiedPenguins]

See, it's not really bias when no one really cares about the third parties.

Hell, the news media does enough to make it look like they care about some of the people running for the Party primaries, but third parties.

Your joking.

[UndeadTemplar88]

At 10/16/08 09:59 AM, kraor024 wrote: Did you know that neither the Democratic nor the Republican parties filed on time to be on the Texas ballot Barr tried to have them removed but the Texas supreme court ruled against it.

Well, that's because nobody in Texas cares about Libertarian scum

[Gunter45]

At 10/16/08 12:23 PM, UndeadTemplar88 wrote: Well, that's because nobody in Texas cares about Libertarian scum

You haven't spent much time in Austin, I warrant.

I'm pretty upset about the fact that third parties don't get much recognition, but I can't be too angry about it. Of course they're not going to get media time when nobody's going to watch it. Say what you will about the news media, but they're a business, a big business, no less. Why sell something nobody's going to buy? The reason they're not going to do shit about it is because nobody's making a fuss over it; or, to be more accurate, not enough people are making a big enough fuss about it.

Never expect people to acquiesce to you for the sake of fairness, especially not major conglomerates. The world doesn't owe the little guy jack shit, especially not "fairness." Join organizations. Seriously, organizations get shit done, but the only way they can do that is through numbers. Make your individual voice count.

[Korriken]

LINK: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/pubfu nd.shtml

It doesn't help that the public funding is set up to exclude minor parties from getting the money to campaign with. They have to obtain 5% of the popular vote in the previous election to even qualify for partial funding. at 33 million people, a party would need 1,650,000 votes to qualify for PARTIAL funding. However, the major parties are automatically qualified for full funding.

The politicians have set it up so that anyone challenging the 2 party titan is gonna have to scale one massive wall in order to even have a thought of competing. even then, they only get partial funding.
Without money you can't advertise. without advertisement, you don't know who you can choose from, and if you don't know, the major parties' power goes unchallenged.

[Saruman200]

Actually, it has nothing to do with the media. The Commission on Presidential Debates requires a candiate to be polling above 15% to participate in the debates. The media has no say, only the CPD does. Not allowing third-party candiates to debate is completely lawful.