Who decides who'll be allowed on TV debates?

WHO DECIDES WHO'LL BE ALLOWED ON TV DEBATES?
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Bob Egelko]
The Nevada Supreme Court's ruling allowing a cable network to exclude Rep. Dennis Kucinich from a Democratic presidential debate might prove to be as significant as any of the political events in the Nevada campaign. It constituted the strongest judicial statement yet of news organizations' near-absolute power to control participation in pre-election forums. Broadcasters' right to exclude candidates they consider marginal has been established at least since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a 1998 case involving a state-owned television station in Arkansas that had excluded a congressional candidate from a debate. The court said the public station couldn't factor candidates' viewpoints into its decisions -- a constitutional restriction on government conduct that probably wouldn't apply to a private broadcaster -- but could bar a candidate with little public support on journalistic grounds. The bottom line: Debates, the public's sole opportunity to see competing candidates in a neutral setting, are the prerogative of the sponsoring organizations -- typically, these days, the news media - which set the criteria and have free rein to alter them.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/23/MNJDUJ0TP.DT...