From James Fallows' The Horrible "Debate", The Atlantic:
Whatever else happens the next time we choose a president, there has got to be a better way to see candidates operate under pressure than the grotesque system that has metastasized during this electoral cycle. It makes candidates into mere props for bullying anchormen-narcissists. It does no one except the anchormen any good. I mentioned earlier the oddity of Jimmy Carter and GW Bush finding common cause about China policy. Maybe the RNC and the DNC can join hands in freeing political debate from the destructive grip of the networks. And if they can't do that, maybe we should just go all the way and have the candidates compete eating pails full of maggots on Fear Factor. That's the logical extension of where we're headed.
In 1996 "Why Americans Hate the Media" by James Fallows was featured in The Atlantic. The article was an excerpt from his book Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, of which Publisher's Weekly said "Fallows's rousing jeremiad is an important beacon for everyone concerned about the news media's poor performance in helping the public make sane choices about the way we live, work and govern,".
Fallows makes the point that when ordinary people have the opportunity to ask questions of candidates, "they ask the candidates about things that will affect the voters' lives. These are generally questions of war, peace, economics, etc." He relays a time when Bill Clinton was interviewed by a group of teenagers in Boston and was asked only substantive questions about policy and legislation, and soon after when he was interviewed by the three network-news anchors, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather, "None of the questions from these news professionals concerned the impact of legislation or politics on people's lives. Nearly all concerned the struggle for individual advancement among candidates."