Tomah Journal - Printable Version

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Published - Sunday, April 27, 2008

Editorial: Celebrity journalists ignored basic issues

Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News apparently thought they were breaking the mold as debate moderators. Rather than bore viewers with public policy questions during an April 15 presidential forum, they spiced up their presidential debate -- and their credentials as celebrity journalists -- with guilt-by-association queries directed toward Barack Obama.

Gibson and Stephanopoulos, of course, could have broken the mold in a very different way. They could have asked Obama and Hillary Clinton about two of life’s most important issues: food and water.

Food and water are literally life-and-death concerns, yet they virtually never get mentioned on the campaign trail.

Take the rising cost of food. World Food Program Executive Director Josette Sheeran said a “silent tsunami” of hunger is sweeping the world's most desperate nations as prices skyrocket and push 20 million children worldwide to the brink of starvation. Does America have an obligation to avert a humanitarian catastrophe? To what extent have our own domestic policies of converting cropland from food to bio-fuels contributed to the rising price of food?

There’s also the domestic politics of food. Do the presidential candidates support farm subsidies? What’s their opinion of the proposed Farm Bill extension? Do they favor reforms introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse) to transform the system of subsidies into a market-oriented insurance program? Do they favor an expansion of the Food Stamp program if rising prices trigger hunger outbreaks in the United States?

Water is another critical, but ignored, issue. The ongoing drought in the Southeast proves that water is no longer an issue for just the desert Southwest. How should water be apportioned? How much should agriculture get? How much should residential homeowners get? Should water be privatized? Should water be diverted from the Great Lakes to drier areas of the country?

These are some of the most fundamental questions faced by policymakers, but neither Gibson nor Stephanopoulos asked them. How can anyone argue that “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” is a better question than any of those posed above? Only a celebrity journalist could think so.