First ever presidential candidates’ debate sparks debate

Santo Domingo.- Journalist and writer Miguel Guerrero said Thursday that if a firs ever debate of presidential candidates materializes, Dominican journalists should moderate it because placing it in the hands foreigners she would be an “insult to the national media.”

He suggested the journalists Juan Bolivar Diaz and Alicia Ortega for the task, but noted that there are many other professionals who could do the work. “The debate would have to air live nationwide via whichever television channel and radio station interested in doing so, because a station cannot be forced to join a chain, without eroding their right to choose the companies.”

Quoted by newspaper Hoy, Guerrero said if the debate, on a demand of a candidate, is conditioned to moderation by a foreigner, “it would be a thousand times preferable not to stage it.”

“The simple suggestion that a stranger to national media moderates it constitutes an unacceptable scorn to the Dominican journalistic class and I hope that possibility is publicly discarded, for the good name of whomever has had such an unfortunate idea,” he said, adding that Diaz and Ortega “are today, each in their specialty, two of the highest expressions of good media.”