Prejudicial interrogation singed the oil and gas industry while backfiring on its CNBC practitioners during the third Republican presidential debate Oct. 28.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz scored the evening’s main point when he told network moderators in Boulder, “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.”
CNBC’s smoothies deserve a measure of indulgence for the difficulty of guiding 10 loquacious people through 2 hr of conversation.
But there’s no excuse for an incoherent barrage of trip-wire questions designed to discombobulate respondents.
“People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions,” said CNBC spokesperson Brian Steel in response to sharp criticism his organization received and deserved.
Yes. And people who call themselves journalists should employ tough questions in service to the illumination of positions on important issues. What the CNBC journalists illuminated mainly was their own pointless truculence.
Disregard for substance was evident when Rick Santelli reminded Ben Carson he had opposed government subsidies yet favored a transfer of “oil subsidies” to ethanol manufacture.
“Isn’t that just swapping one subsidy for another, Doctor?” Santelli asked.
The question asserts the existence of massive “oil subsidies,” which are, in fact, products of the Obama administration’s artful semantics and exploitation of tax-law impenetrability.
Carson seemed ready to make clarifying distinctions when he said, “I was wrong about taking the oil subsidy.” Then, alas, he veered into generalities about intrusive governance.
A follow-up request for Carson to explain what made him wrong about “the oil subsidy” might have elicited useful information. But the CNBC cohort chose instead to raise a question about name-calling that led nowhere when the alleged name-callers pled innocence.
The debate thus revealed more about network journalism than about the presidential wannabes.
So no one yet knows whether anyone on camera in Boulder can define “intangible drilling costs” or “Section 199 deduction.” And Americans still think “Big Oil” enjoys lavish subsidies.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Oct. 30, 2015; author’s e-mail: [email protected])
About the Author
Bob Tippee
Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.