Charges are made that television emphasizes personalities and the horse race aspect of election issues. would you defend or refute this...

Certainly consulting what you have in class would be
important.  If you are looking for opinions, I would tend to defend the statement that
TV emphasizes looks, personality, and the sound byte type of campaign over any real sort
of discussion or debate.

At the same time, it is important
to note that campaigning has always been about saying what you need to in order to get
elected, so that part of it is not changed by TV.

But it
does tend to emphasize the one side and another side aspect by forcing the candidates to
compete in very short frames of time.  Instead of discussing solutions, or taking the
time to be clear and informative, it has more to do with being dapper, smooth, and
sticking to a preset strategy.