Four days have passed since WBUR, WCVB and the Boston Globe announced the August 20 hourlong primary debate between Senator Ed Markey and Representative Seth Moulton. [1] The same senator is also the author of record on the May 7 press-freedom letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opposing the Disney eight-ABC-station license renewal directive — a deadline that hits Thursday, May 28. The dual calendar the paper named Friday and Saturday holds into Sunday with neither clock disturbed and neither stage modified.

The paper's Saturday brief on the same dual calendar noted Markey's decline of the June 16 WBZ-TV debate moderated by Jon Keller and his replacement on that stage by Republican John Deaton, who will face Moulton instead. The Sunday update is the silence on the FCC side. The Disney directive has produced no public filing in twenty-six days. The Markey letter has produced no Carr response. The August 20 debate is twelve weeks after the May 28 FCC deadline; the debate is at T-89 days, the FCC deadline is at T-4. [2]

The structural test for the August stage is whether the Disney clock surfaces in the conversation. The structural test for the May 28 FCC deadline is whether anything surfaces at all. Both calendars reward delay. The senator with the press-freedom letter's pen is between two deadlines neither of which he set, and the Massachusetts primary electorate that watches the August debate will see exactly one of them resolved before they vote on September 1. [3]

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington