Women Moderators

What happens when Candy isn’t so sweet?

Candy Crowley has a reputation for being a tough journalist. So, when it was announced that she would be moderating the second Presidential Debate of 2012, there wasn’t much of a reaction - except perhaps joy from those calling for gender equality within the election. However, Crowley’s fact-checking faux pas during the debate sparked much criticism on her behalf, with many even requesting that Crowley resign as a journalist because of her bias toward President Obama.

Saying that Crowley was the one who “saved Obama and derailed the debate” is like saying President Obama was surely re-elected for a second term because he visited New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy and showed compassion. It’s just not true.

Gloria Steinem, a white journalist, knows exactly how Crowley feels. Steinem’s Op-Ed piece published in The New York Times during the 2008 Presidential Election received an equal amount of criticism. In an attempt to reveal the misogyny that took place with Hillary Clinton, Steinem unconsciously created a hierarchy of discrimination, with gender at the top as the most “restricting,” and race falling somewhere beneath it. What Steinem was trying to get at, though, was her belief that “the caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.”

Steinem is right. The complexity in addressing both of these concerns is that they are so finely woven together; That is why her article received so much criticism. Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, became the first African American woman to run in a major party primary. When reflecting on this, she stated “the truth is that in the political world I have been far more often discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.”

In terms of both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections, the issues of race and gender have become unavoidable. In 2008, we witnessed a female and an African American man running for Presidency, with a female running for Vice Presidency. Furthermore, Gwen Ifill, a black woman, moderated the V.P. debate. In 2012, the debate moderators included Martha Raddatz (V.P. Debate moderator) and Candy Crowley (Presidential Debate moderator), evening out the ratio of male-female moderators to a beautiful 2:2.

Crowley showed no fear of facing gender discrimination when she was offered the position: “My first thought wasn’t, ‘I’m a woman.’ My first thought was, ‘This is an incredible honor.’ For a journalist, it doesn’t get any better than this.”

Some commentators on the situation seemed to imagine unbiased gender treatment toward the female moderators. One commenter said in response to a critical article on Crowley, “Funny how the right gave Jim Lehrer a pass when he let Romney walk all over him and the President.” The viewer suggests that since Lehrer was a male, he wasn’t attacked after a poor performance, but Crowley received much more criticism since she was a female. But this is not true: Lehrer received just as much criticism on his inability to keep the men on topic. Professor Jay Rosen at New York University even Tweeted, “Romney took strong advantage of a weak moderator. Some reporters even openly attacked Bob Schieffer’s age, saying he was too old to be a moderator. But with all my research, I could not find a single article that depicted Crowley being critiqued because she was a female. Some will choose to discriminate against a moderator at any means that they can: race, gender, age, etc. But a majority of the critiques seemed centered around the moderator's personal position (or assumed position) as a Republican or Democrat.

The moderators did not solely receive bad reviews, there were many who applauded Crowley, Raddatz, Lehrer and Schieffer. Despite the concerns of both Crowley and Raddatz not being treated equally because of their gender, it seems as if the bigger disapproval came from what was not represented in the debates: an African American male or female moderator. 

In an article by Eric Deggans, he presses the question “Why does [the] presidential debate commission only allow one kind of diversity in its moderators?” He explains how they “up[ped] the ante of gender diversity, while leaving racial diversity in the dust.” In an Op-Ed piece written by NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, he connected the racial diversity to that of the newsroom: “The lack of diversity among this year’s debate moderators is representative of the overall lack of diversity in news media.” Gwen Ifill, moderator of Vice Presidential debates in both 2004 and 2008, and also an African American journalist, was apparently “livid” about not being chosen as a moderator in this year’s debates.

Prior to the November election, a trio of teenage girls created an online petition asking for female moderators in this year’s debates. For reference, the last woman to moderate a presidential election was Carole Simpson in 1992. Before her, it was Barbara Walters, who moderated in 1984 and 1976. The first woman to ever moderate a Presidential Debate was Pauline Frederick in 1976. It’s possible that the petition enabled these girls to have their voices heard; it’s possible that it didn’t. Either way, that should not stop people from still trying. Three teenage girls had the power to influence government! That is not an easy feat. As “we the people,” we should take advantage of our power as American citizens and demand more from both the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the media as a whole.

In the mean time, we can only ponder the possible 2016 candidates (Hillary Clinton, anyone?) and their potential moderators. There is already an online petition for Judith Sheindlin (better known as Judge Judy). Then again, there is also a case for Wonder Woman floating around.