Fox News' Democratic presidential debate goes kaput.

On April 9, Barack Obama announced that he would be joining Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Hillary Clinton in declining an invitation to participate in September's Democratic presidential primary debate co-sponsored by Fox News. This debate, one of four that are co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute (another, also co-sponsored by Fox News, is a Republican presidential debate and the other two were co-sponsored by CNN), is now effectively defunct with 3 of the most prominent Democratic presidential candidates not participating. Most likely it shares the fate of another Fox News-sponsored democratic presidential debate which was to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada but was canceled last month after John Edwards backed out of it and Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes made a joke comparing Obama to Osama bin Ladin.

Some folks are upset over Obama, Clinton, and Edwards' decisions, claiming that it's unfair for them to boycott one news organization's debates but participate in others. The right-leaning Las Vegas Review-Journal led the charge against the Democratic candidates (and their supporters on the Internet) by saying:

"But the socialist, Web-addicted wing of the Democratic Party was apoplectic. The prospect of having to watch Fox News to see their own candidates would have been torture in itself. So they set the blogosphere aflame with efforts to kill the broadcast arrangement, or at least have all the candidates pull out of the event."

Many conservative bloggers picked up on the Review-Journal's opinion piece, with one blogger complaining that Democrats are "opposed to ideas, opposed to debate, opposed to the democratic tradition in the United States - a bunch of small-minded, mean little junior league Leninists - contemptible in all respects."

But while the Democratic candidates are explaining their decisions by agreeing that they are only participating in debates sanctioned by the DNC (and these Fox News ones were not), it's not hard to see why Democratic candidates wouldn't be too keen on giving Fox News validation.

Fox News has made a name for itself by being the largest, most powerful conservative-leaning media outlet in the country (and the world). While "they lean conservative" in and of itself isn't a very good reason to boycott Fox News-sponsored debates, it's more a matter of how far they lean and how their political ideologies manifest themselves. For instance, yesterday Fox News was reporting on a comment that Barack Obama made on April 1 about the clash over war funding between Congress and President Bush, putting up on the TV a screen showing a picture of Sen. Obama along with the quote "...wants to play chicken with our troops." The screen seemed to indicate that Barack Obama wants play with our troops lives in a game of chicken with President Bush. However, the full quote from Sen. Obama is "I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground." Now if this was one little slip-up this could be written off as an accident or inadvertent stupidity. But unfortunately for Fox News, this is just one example in a slew of similar occurrences. Not to mention their habit of reporting the already-proven-false story that Obama is a "radical Muslim" trying to conceal his Islamic past.

So let me ask you this: if you were a Democratic presidential candidate (especially one like Obama who is constantly and incorrectly portrayed as a Muslim terrorist sympathizer) would you want to give credibility to a news organization that consistently lies and misleads people to further the Republican party's political agenda?

That said, I can see both sides of the argument. While I don't think Fox News has earned the right to host a debate between Democratic presidential candidates, I also don't see how exactly they would be able to skew the debate to make all of the candidates look bad (the story would be different if Fox News were hosting a debate between a Republican and Democratic candidate, as obviously it wouldn't be difficult for the Fox News moderator to feed the Republican candidate easy questions and grill the Democratic candidate with questions based on deception). But as the previously-quoted Las Vegas Review-Journal article points out "You'd think the deal called for having Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter mock the candidates between comments. No, even unfiltered, unedited, live debate between loyal Democrats couldn't be entrusted to Fox News."

In that sense, I see where the Review-Journal is coming from. As conservative blog Captain's Quarters points out, "one has to reach voters in order to convince them to support their candidates ... The point isn't to love the network, but to reach their viewers." And, as the above-quoted Roger Ailes of Fox News says, "We're heading into a tough political season and all of us will be called upon to do our best and be fair. Recently, pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide an conquer, is to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage." (Although I would like to point out that these conservative op-ed journalists and bloggers are at the same time saying that the Republican party works hand in hand with every media outlet in order to reach as many voters as they can, which isn't exactly true. It's no secret that Republicans cooperate primarily with Fox News since they know they will receive favorable coverage.)

So where does this leave me? Do I support the decisions of Obama, Clinton, and Edwards to boycott the Fox News-sponsored debates or do I agree with the conservatives that the candidates blew a chance to reach out to Fox News viewers? I've thought about this a bit, and while I think that the Democratic candidates have every right to boycott the debates, I think they made the wrong decision in doing so. While Fox News is anything but fair and balanced, I think that it's futile to try and chip away at their credibility. Whether Fox News is a credible news source or not doesn't matter. What matters is that millions of Americans watch the channel, and participating in these debates would give those Americans a chance to be exposed to ideas that they don't normally get to hear on Fox News.