Democrats alter Fox debate

Michael J. Mishak

Thursday, March 8, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

After weeks of sniping from online activists unhappy with the Nevada Democratic Party's decision to partner with Fox News for a Democratic presidential debate, party officials unveiled a peace offering Wednesday.

In a statement to Nevada Democrats, state party Chairman Tom Collins said the party, at the urging of Sen. Harry Reid, had reexamined the makeup of the Reno debate and made changes.

KJFK radio, the Reno affiliate for the left-leaning Air America, will have the option to air the August debate live, and C-SPAN has been offered the rights to air the event in its entirety twice after Fox's broadcast, Collins said.

Also, the state party landed a slot for a "local progressive voice" on the panel of questioners, he said. PoliticsTV.com will have the ability to carry the Fox News Web cast feed as well.

Activists had argued that Fox isn't a legitimate news organization, citing an instance in January in which the cable news network erroneously reported that Sen. Barack Obama had enrolled in a madrassa as a child in Indonesia and studied a radical form of Islam there - then sourced it to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

MoveOn.org, a leading liberal activist group, circulated an online petition to get the state party to drop Fox, which it considers a "mouthpiece for the Republican Party," as the debate's host.

On Wednesday, the group rejected the state party's proposals. "Fox will still be presented to the public as a legitimate news source under this proposal," MoveOn.org spokesman Adam Green said. "In the spirit of Fox News, the Nevada Democratic Party is offering a rigged, unfair, unbalanced event." Three of the debate's four panelists are affiliated with Fox, he said.

In partnering with Fox, the state party saw a rare opportunity: 90 minutes of Democratic talking points directed at TV viewers whose devotion to Fox means they usually get news about Democrats filtered through the network's conservative prism.

The move was supported by the Democratic parties of four Western states, including Arizona and New Mexico, in addition to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

In an interview, Collins said he hopes the measures will put the debate over the Fox event to rest, and that activists will now concentrate their efforts on helping both Democratic candidates and the Nevada caucus.

"People need to find something else to talk about," Collins said. "If this much energy gets put into getting a Democrat into the White House, I guarantee it will happen."

Most of the criticism of Fox's role came from out of state, state party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said. "Nevadans seem to be much more open."

Mike Zahara, an at-large delegate to the state party's executive board who has been critical of the Fox debate, said he appreciated the party's efforts, but that the candidates themselves would ultimately determine the event's fate.

On Tuesday, former Sen. John Edwards, through his deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Price, told the liberal blog Daily Kos, which had led the charge against the Nevada debate, that he would not attend.

"By the end of March, we will have attended three presidential forums in Nevada - and there are already at least three proposed Nevada debates," Price said. "We're definitely going to debate in Nevada, but we don't see why this needs to be one of them."

Sun reporter Tony Cook contributed to this report.