The Irony of the ABC Debate Aftermath
After the abysmal ABC debate, most of the media as well as huge numbers of internet users attacked ABC, with talk of boycotting them (although that obviously won’t work) and numerous sites writing about how and why it was a total failure. I noticed it most prominently on Digg.com because I spend so much time there, and there were multiple stories about the debate hitting the front page every day.
To put it simply, the ABC debate has become a huge topic of controversy and negativity, overshadowing many of the other more important current issues. Which is exactly what everyone is acting so mad about - “unimportant” issues being focused on instead of the ones we really need to know about. In the internet’s mostly collective effort to bash ABC and complain about the debate, it seems everyone has failed to notice that making such a big deal out of the ABC debate is, to a much lesser extent, exactly what ABC did - blowing specific, sometimes trivial events and details way out of proportion and focusing on them instead of the issues that really matter.*
If you look at the number of Digg stories on the economy or the Iraq war or torture since the debate I’d bet that they are outnumbered by those talking about the debate itself.
There are over 19,000 comments on ABC’s story about the debate, and stories on much more important issues rarely achieve that much discussion (in the short time I looked, I didn’t see a single story on ABC that even managed to get a quarter of that number of comments).
Google Trends shows what people seem to care about most even more clearly, with the search term “abc debate” outranking “iraq war,” “recession” and “torture” by a large margin for three straight days.
Granted, internet users and even some of the journalists who have criticized the debate do not have as much of a duty to be fair and focus on the important issues as those actually entrusted with running a crucial debate. So while it’s not near as bad and more expected, it’s still ironic for so many to treat the debate the same way ABC treated non-issues in their questioning. The media and plenty of internet users (myself included) need to make sure we’re not sinking to their level, and put most of our efforts into bringing attention to the real issues instead of dwelling on the media’s inadequacies. The debate sucked, the hosts handled it horribly and were biased, now can we please move on and do what ABC failed to do by focusing on the real issues?
*And I admit, I’ve been just as caught up in it, digging the stories like everyone else, but now I’m realizing there’s a problem
(And yes, I do realize the irony in posting a story about the debate criticizing people for posting stories about the debate, but someone had to say it)
