Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, moderating a panel on whether the media is biased or elitist at the Time Warner Center, asked Dan Rather about the presidential debates and sports-like analysis.



"First of all, these aren’t debates," Rather said. "They are a 'something,' but they aren’t debates."



Rather talked about the constricted format and that the two major political parties are the ones engineering them through the commission.



"These so-called debates are not by the people, for the people," Rather said. "They are by the parties, for the parties."



As for the post-debate commentary from partisan political consultants, Rather said most of them are "mercenary propagandists" for their parties.

Others on the panel include Bill Adair, Washington bureau chief of the St. Petersburg Times; David Sirota, columnist and author of “The Uprising”; Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, and Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal columnist.

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