THE GREAT ELECTION DEBATE: "How the Media can Sway Votes and Win Elections"

THE GREAT ELECTION DEBATE: "How the Media can Sway Votes and Win Elections" - Wolfman Productions

Months before voters go to the polls, powerful media outlets have shaped our opinions of the candidates – their haircuts and cleavage, their religious views and marital troubles. Are media now obstacles to serious discussion of the issues? Can Democrats get a fair shake at the hands of conservative media conglomerates? Are Republicans undermined by liberal reporters and public broadcasting? How is campaign coverage being changed by the Internet. By YouTube? By Comedy Central?

Two of our country's top media critics – one on the left, one on the right – offer a lively, cutting-edge debate on the media's crucial role in the 2008 campaign.

Steve Rendall is FAIR's (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) senior analyst. He is co-host of CounterSpin, FAIR's national radio show. His work has received awards from Project Censored, and has won the praise of noted journalists including Les Payne, Molly Ivins and Garry Wills.

He is co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error.

Rendall has appeared on dozens of national television and radio shows, including appearances on NBC Nightly News, CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, Fox News, MTV and more. He was the subject of a New York Times profile (5/19/96), and has been quoted on issues of media and politics in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and New York Times.

Rendall contributed stories to the International Herald Tribune from France, Spain and North Africa; worked as a freelance writer in San Francisco; and worked as an archivist collecting historical material on the Spanish Civil War and the volunteers who fought in it.

Rendall studied philosophy and chemistry at San Francisco State University, the College of Notre Dame and UC Berkeley.

Peter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra, and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin.

He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed.

Cliff Kincaid is the director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism, sponsored by the conservative media watchdog organization, AIM, the oldest media watchdog organization in the U.S. AIM almost single-handedly blocked Al-Jazeera English, the voice of al-Qaeda, from gaining a foothold in the U.S. As a result, Politico has called Kincaid “one of Al Jazeera’s most vocal critics.” It also credited him for filing a complaint that forced an American program host for Russia Today television off the air. But Kincaid also made headlines by criticizing Glenn Beck for stealing research from other conservatives and using it on the air.

Kincaid co-hosted CNN's Crossfire and worked for Oliver North. He appears frequently on national TV, with recent appearances on PBS, CNN and Fox News. One of his books, The Death of Talk Radio?, looks at the possible return of the Fairness Doctrine under a Democratic president.