The Council on American–Islamic Relations said the question was “reckless and biased” and “sounded like it could have been written by AIPAC, not CBS.”
U.S. vice presidential candidates Sen. JD Vance, Republican from Ohio, and Gov. Tim Walz, Democrat from Minnesorta, during Monday night’s debate on CBS. (C-Span grab)
By Edward Carver
Common Dreams
Foreign policy experts and civil rights groups criticized CBS News‘ moderators following Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate for asking only one narrowly framed question about conflict in the Middle East.
Co-moderator Margaret Brennan, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, opened the debate by stating that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within a week or two and asking if the two vice presidential candidates would support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran.
“Wait. What?” Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank, wrote in response to the question.
Vlahos expressed disbelief that “after nearly 12 months of war in Gaza, more than 40,000 dead — mostly civilians — a spiraling humanitarian crisis, hostages dead or still in captivity, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders assassinated, a new war in Lebanon where 1 million people may be displaced, charges of genocide, and a cease-fire endlessly elusive,” this was the question CBS had chosen?
Peter Beinart, an editor at Jewish Currents and professor of journalism at the City University of New York, argued that the question should have focused on how to stop a regional war, writing on social media that CBS‘s framing “pretty much encapsulates what is wrong with U.S. media coverage of this conflict.”
The Council on American–Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, said the question was “reckless and biased” and “sounded like it could have written by AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], not CBS.”
Tonight's vice president debate opened with a reckless and biased question about bombing Iran that sounded like it could have written by AIPAC, not CBS. Our soldiers and taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be wasted on another futile war in the Middle East that ends with more blood on our… pic.twitter.com/jyOmgsBbm1
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 2, 2024
The debate took place on the same day that Iran fired roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
Iran said the strikes were retaliation for recent Israeli assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. The strikes followed Israel’s launch of a ground incursion into southern Lebanon. Israeli and U.S. forces intercepted the vast majority of the missiles, which were targeted at military facilities, [Israel says].
Vlahos, of the Quincy Institute, suggested that focusing on the Iran threat was a way of avoiding larger questions and that Brennan’s narrow framing was intentional.
“If the CBS moderators wanted to avoid talking frankly about the aforementioned issues which might mean — here it comes — raising criticism of Israel, this was the way to do it,” she wrote. “Make it all about Iran.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential candidate, said that he would defer to Israel.
“We should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, didn’t directly answer the preemptive strike question but immediately invoked the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas and said Israel had the “absolutely fundamental” right to defend itself.
Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Accusing a proxy of mainstream corporate media of dastardly deeds is nothing more than APACK of lies; “don’t you know”?
Unbelievable how the media promotes war in this country!
“Co-moderator Margaret Brennan, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, opened the debate by stating that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within a week or two and asking if the two vice presidential candidates would support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran.”
What?
Doesn’t CBS remember how the U.S. administration back in September, 2002, prepared the world to accept the U.S.-led war with Iraq on the basis of false scares? So you had National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice saying, with regards to Iraq, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Or Vice-President Dick Cheney, “The United States may well become the target.” Secretary of State Colin Powell added his own encouragement with “I don’t think we should just sit around and wait.” To top it off Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “Our task is to connect the dots before the fact.”
With that propaganda precedent, why should anyone with a sense of history believe it when the U. S. makes comparable claims about Iran’s “within a week or two” nuclear weapon capability. What is the basis for such a seemingly precise assertion?
The vulgarity of such a question has escaped Western Minority World media functionaries. If an equivalent question had come up in a similar debate in an unapproved nation, it would have been front page news
I remember about eight years ago over at CommonDreams I used to post quite a bit under CD articles, I’d very often ardently complain about the overwhelming influence the Zionist Power Configuration in America has over our socio-politico-economic reality. I recall getting mocked and ridiculed relentlessly at CD for addressing the power of the ZPC.
Today anyone who has seen what’s been going on in America or Southwest Asia over the past few years would have to be a complete imbecile or bought off blatant liar to deny that a ZPC exists and to deride anyone who expounds about it at length.
Pox on all their houses and shame on the gatekeeping propagandists (they were fellow commenters) who deliberately ignored reality and had the gall to criticize those of us who didn’t!
America is in decline. Serious decline. That is all I can think of to say. oh, and that Israel is the American prick shoved into the middle east.