Gwen Ifill ‘for Obama’ v. Tom Brokaw ‘for McCain’
01 October 2008 11:11 am by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
–updated–
**UPDATE: Ifill’s book was no secret.
Hear conservatives whine.
If you want to know how much the right-wing is lapping up the latest traditional
media controversy, all you had to do was listen to the first part of Rush’s
show this morning. El Rushbo gleefully cited Gwen Ifill as being in the tank
for Obama, so the fix is in for the veep debate.
Funny, nobody said a word after Tom
Brokaw ham-handedly inserted McCain’s vaunted commander in chief credentials
on “Meet the Press” this Sunday, which came out of nowhere.
MR. BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I’m just going to end on one note,
and that is that we continue to poll on who’s best equipped to be commander
in chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism
from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll.
Oh right, “fairness.” In a pig’s lipstick. This little comment from
Brokaw just about gave me whiplash.
That was followed on Monday by a long
portrait of Brokaw and his role at NBC and MSNBC, including that he “advocated”
to modify the jobs of Olbermann and Matthews. Now Brokaw has put himself in
the midst of the presidential debates, by actually conducting “shuttle
diplomacy” with the McCain campaign. What cinched McCain being on board
was that Brokaw will moderate one of them.
But less widely known is that Mr. Brokaw has also played a pivotal role out
of public view, both within NBC and in its dealings with the campaign of John
McCain in particular.… Mr. Brokaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent
weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure
the candidate’s aides that — despite some negative on-air commentary
by Mr. Olbermann in particular — Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake
from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom
he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative
as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates — until his
name was invoked.“One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so
irritated, they said, ‘If it’s an NBC moderator, for any of these
debates, we won’t go,’ ” Mr. Brokaw said. “My name
came up, and they said, ‘Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it’s
going to be Brokaw.’ ” …
Where was wingnut radio and the conservatives when this story broke on Monday?
**crickets**
Now, I’ve been a very strong advocate for Brokaw and his role in changing the
dynamic, especially on MSNBC for reasons we’ve discussed a million times before.
But it’s more than clear he’s gotten himself neck deep in the McCain debate
seduction to the point that rivals anything Ifill might be doing.
Would I have picked Ifill knowing she’d written a book entitled “The Breakthrough:
Politics and Race in the Age of Obama?” I don’t know. I will say that it’s
been pretty clear Ifill has been for Obama for months, going back into the primaries.
A better choice would have been — and still is in my opinion — Judy Woodruff.
Though we should also remember that Ifill isn’t moderating a debate where Obama
is directly involved.
But that still leaves us with the Tom Brokaw issue. Yes, he’s earned his stature,
but it’s clear from recent events he’s willing to trade on it for the guy he
promoted on Sunday, and has done doing “shuttle diplomacy” for over
the debates, who will be present because of his presence as moderator. “Fair
and balanced” comes to NBC.
