In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

First, a batch of top-tier Republican prospects -- including Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee – decided to sit out tomorrow night’s GOP presidential primary debate, co-sponsored by Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party. 
  
 And now, major media organizations are sitting it out too. 
  
 The Associated Press announced Wednesday night that it’s not going to cover tomorrow night’s Republican presidential debate, citing “restrictions placed on media access.” 
  
  
  
 “The debate sponsors, Fox News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party, will only allow photos to be taken in the moments ahead of the debate and not during the event itself,” the AP said in an advisory to editors. 
  
  
  
 “These are restrictions that violate basic demands of news-gathering and differ from other debates where more access was granted. Accordingly, the AP will not staff the event in any format nor will the AP disseminate any pool photos taken by another outlet.” 
  
 The AP said the decision was “consistent with longstanding policy” in coverage of events like these, and would be reassessed “should access conditions change.” 
  
 Reuters confirmed that it would not be covering the event photographically, because it shared concerns about access. However, Reuters did not confirm whether it would be going as far as AP and not filing text either. 
  
 “This is about whether visual journalists will be treated with the same respect that text journalists are treated,” said Michael Oreskes, AP’s managing editor for U.S. News. “The public has a right to see presidential candidates as well as to read about them, and we think this debate should get off on the right foot.” 
  
 Oreskes said the AP found out Tuesday about restrictions that would bar photographers from taking photos throughout the length of the debate, and informed the South Carolina Republican Party that this was unacceptable. 
  
 “At this event four years ago, both Reuters and the Associated Press had wide access for our still photographers during the debate,” he said. 
  
 But Joel Sawyer, the executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, says that’s simply not so. 
  
 “This is the same way every debate sponsored by Fox and the South Carolina GOP has operated in the past,” Sawyer said. “This is not about us changing the rules of the game. It’s a matter of the AP changing the rules of the game. The AP has said if they are not able to sit in for the entire debate, they’re not going to cover it period. And frankly, we are not interested in the AP trying to bully us.” 
  
 In past debates, photographers have been able to shoot some portion of the debate, either at the beginning or at the end, but not sit through the entire debate. 
  
 “No photographer has sat for the entirety of the Fox News-South Carolina GOP debate in the past,” he said. 
  
 Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, oversaw the two previous debates leading up to the 2008 election, and remembers no such problems in the past. 
  
 He could not recall the exact rules that were given to the photographers, but said many of the circumstances this time around were different. ‘We had a lot bigger staff, and we had 10 candidates,” he said. “They’d been campaigning for 8 months. We had a professional photographer that provided something for them [the news organizations]. 
  
 While he said “no one took photos throughout the entire debates,” he has gone back and seen Reuters and AP photos of the past South Carolina GOP debates taken by AP and Reuters, so there must have been at least some photography during the event. 
  
 During the first debate, held in May of 2007 at the Koger Center for the Arts, the venue had a booth for professional performances that Fox News wasn’t using, so he said “we may well have put the photographers in there.” 
  
 *This post has been updated to include Reuters's decision and comment from AP, the South Carolina Republican Party and its former chairman. 
  
 UPDATE: AP spokesman Paul Colford said a check of AP photo files revealed that the organization shot more than 80 pictures from the second South Carolina GOP debate of the 2008 election cycle, held in January of that year, and that several of the photos show candidates behind podiums gesturing as they answered questions during the debate. 
  
 “That’s a far cry from what they offered us yesterday, which is a pool photographer for the handshakes before the start,” he said. 
  
 UPDATE II: AP sent out an advisory Thursday evening indicating that their position hadn't changed, saying, "We anticipate a text political story tonight based on interviews with the candidates in South Carolina on the death of Osama bin Laden. Should debate access conditions change, the AP will reassess this decision and expedite a coverage advisory if warranted." ||||| Sure, the Republican heavyweights wont be there. And the Democratic incumbent may steal the days spotlight  meeting with 9/11 families in New York City after the killing of Osama bin Laden. But the show must go on. 
  
 The 2012 presidential campaign officially kicks off with tonights debate in Greenville. 
  
 Winthrop University political scientist Scott Huffmon will be blogging the debate, which starts at 9 p.m., live online. 
  
 The candidates who will be there  Former pizza executive Herman Cain, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania 
  
 The forum  Greenvilles Peace Center, to be broadcast on Fox News Channel, from 9-10:30 p.m. 
  
 The stakes  With the GOPs presumed front-runners sitting the debate out or undecided whether they will run, Pawlenty has the most to gain or lose of those appearing. 
  
 The former Minnesota governor is the one candidate appearing who has a shot at winning the GOP nomination and  sans Mitch Daniels, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump; all of whom may or may not run  Pawlenty can command the spotlight and, he hopes, win attention and support. 
  
 Pawlenty can point to his record appealing to social and fiscal conservatives, but is largely unknown nationally and lacks the pop of other candidates. 
  
 Likewise, he risks getting dragged into the weeds if forced to address some of the arch-conservative or libertarian beliefs of the lesser-known candidates at the debate. 
  
 Paul is a known commodity among Republicans  he has a die-hard group of supporters but many in the GOP are turned off by what they view as his isolationist foreign policy. Paul won a recent Lexington County GOP straw poll and can raise boatloads of money, which will allow him to stay in the race as long as he wants. 
  
 For Cain, the debate could be a chance at some much-needed media attention. Tea Party groups around the state have raved about their meetings with him; now others will get their first chance to hear him. 
  
 No one has spent as much time in South Carolina as Santorum, who will make the strongest appeal to the states religious conservatives. 
  
 Key issues  An April poll by Winthrop University showed the economy, the budget and deficit, politicians and jobs were the top four campaign issues cited by Republican or Republican-leaning respondents. 
  
 Also, expect foreign policy to come up after the U.S. military killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden on Sunday. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, will be accused of not giving former President George W. Bush, a Republican, enough credit. Paul will say the United States should swear off foreign interventions, withdrawing to our shores. |||||
If the GOP held a presidential debate and barely anyone attended, would it still be a debate? The AP and Reuters are the latest to duck out of tonight's South Carolina debate, Politico reports. A number of prospective candidates, including Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels, and Mike Huckabee, had already opted to sit it out. The debate, co-sponsored by Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party, has "restrictions placed on media access" that "violate basic demands of newsgathering," the AP complained yesterday. Photos will only be allowed before, not during, the event, leading both the AP and Reuters to decline to photograph the event. The AP will not cover it at all, while Reuters has not said whether it will file a story. Only Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and Rick Santorum will be participating, notes the State.