ABC News Receives Criticism for Handling of Democratic Debate
ABC received nearly 17,000 comments by Thursday, most of which criticized the moderators' handling of the debate.
According to the Associated Press, ABC received a massive number of complaints regarding how Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos moderated the Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday evening.
More than 16,800 comments were posted on ABC News' Web site, mostly negative, by Thursday evening.
"It was another step downward for network news and in particular ABC News . . . whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances," Tom Shales, a Washington Post critic, wrote in a review.
Gibson did a story on all the comments in his Thursday evening edition of "World News."
"The questions were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant," Stephanopoulos, who previously worked for the Clinton's, told the Associated Press. "We wanted to focus at first on the issues that were not focused on during the last debates."
Gibson and Stephanopoulos were heavily criticized for asking questions like why Barack Obama does not wear an American flag pin, before discussing issues such as the economy and the Iraq war.
"Last night I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people," Obama said Thursday at a rally in North Carolina.
The Obama campaign quickly sent out a fundraising appeal titled, "Gotcha," on Thursday in response to the debate, according to AP.
