Gwen Ifill

Last week, Margot Friedman, a public relations professional in Washington, D.C., launched a Web site encouraging NBC News executives to rethink their strategy for picking the next moderator of Meet the Press.

"The New York Times has reported that NBC will name a new moderator for 'Meet the Press' between Election Day and early December," reads the Web site http://dontletnbcdiswomen.org/. "Chuck Todd and David Gregory are in the running. Both men are fine journalists, but they do not represent the racial or gender diversity that their viewers deserve. It is important for viewers to be exposed to a broad range of perspectives and not exclusively those of Caucasian males.  read more »

The ingredient that turned the confident, authoritative Sarah Palin that Americans met at the Republican convention into the alarmingly shaky and ill-informed Miss Teen South Carolina clone they saw in her recent television interviews isn’t exactly a secret: follow-up questions.

At the convention, the Alaska governor (and former television anchor) read from a text, threw in a well-timed ad lib and delivered a mesmerizing performance that she’d had a week to rehearse.  read more »

ST. LOUIS—This time, Sarah Palin wasn’t going to let the questions get in her way.

“I may not answer the questions the way either you or the moderator want to hear,” she said. “But I’m going to speak straight to the American people.”

In her closing remarks, she suggested she’d like to debate again and answer questions “without the filter of the mainstream media.”

What she wanted to do was talk about taxes and energy (and energy, and energy). She delivered polished attack lines with derision, and made check-marks on the papers on her podium.  read more »

Here's the press filing center at Washington University in St. Louis where Joe Biden will debate Sarah Palin tonight.

Except for Lynn Sweet, chatting with a couple of the filmmakers who have been working on an Obama documentary since the beginning of the campaign, it's pretty much empty.

On TVNewser, Alissa Krinsky breaks the news that Gwen Ifill broke her ankle Monday night falling down the stairs in her home while carrying "research related to her moderating duties at Thursday's Vice Presidential debate in St. Louis."

According to TV Newser, despite the injury, Ms. Ifill will still moderate Thursday's debate.

Odd coincidence: According to Wasilla legend, when Sarah Palin was in high school she prevailed in a pivotal basketball game despite having to play on a broken ankle.

Today executives with News Corporation's MySpace announced that they have formed a partnership with the Commission on Presidential Debates to create MyDebates.org—a site that will include a downloadable application capable, in part, of streaming the fall presidential and vice presidential debates live. 

Yesterday, the commission announced the slate of moderators for the fall debates, which will include PBS's Jim Lehrer, NBC's Tom Brokaw, PBS's Gwen Ifill, and CBS's Bob Schieffer. It's an esteemed group. But also one that's somewhat long in the tooth.

Back in April, we wrote about Google's frustrated attempts to team up with the commission on some sort of new media debate.  read more »

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced today the roster of moderators for the three presidential and one vice-presidential debates coming up this fall.

PR Newswire has the details:

First presidential debate
Friday, September 26
The University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss.
Jim Lehrer
Executive Editor and Anchor, The NewsHour, PBS

Vice presidential debate
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
Gwen Ifill
Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor,
Washington Week, PBS

Second presidential debate (town meeting)
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, Tenn.
Tom Brokaw
Special Correspondent, NBC News

Third presidential debate
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
Bob Schieffer
CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent, and Host, Face the Nation

Not on the list: Katie Couric, who was the only broadcast evening news anchor not to moderate a single debate in this year's primary season.  read more »

Yesterday on "Meet the Press," a bunch of journalists rued the new landscape created by Patrick Fitzgerald and his star witness Judith Miller. Tim Russert, Gwen Ifill, Howard Kurtz—they all feared damage to professionalism, that the public might see the press as in bed with powerful officials. (Aren't they?) Even as they complained, the journalists seemed to fear their own loss of privilege. Kurtz talked about professionalism in an entitled manner. Gwen Ifill said that only a crowd inside the Beltway really cares about what Scooter Libby said or didn't say to Judith Miller.

These journalists are out of touch. They don't understand the seismic consequences of the Iraq war, which is slowly transforming our politics (beginning with the Congress). Journalists failed us in that war; Judy Miller disgraced the New York Times by carrying the water for Richard Cheney and thereby misleading a society, with the gravest consequences. In fact, you might say that Judy Miller's testimony is her most honest reporting yet about the way the Iraq war was engineered. Thank you, Judy and Scooter; now I know why the VP's tragic/literary chief of staff routinely took hours of out of his days to talk to reporters.

This trial has demonstrated the corruption of "access journalism," which these journalists like to style as "professional." The crisis of leadership that Iraq represents is also theirs. In the Information Age, they failed us by pushing this war on the basis of false information about WMD and no information about the hidden agendas. It turns out that the less access you had, the more clearthinking you were about what a bad idea it was to invade Iraq. Why does Barack Obama look so good right now? He wasn't in the Senate, that's why; he wasn't compromised. I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky always said, it's more important to read than to go to a cocktail party.

The professional bloodletting that is happening in the Libby trial, the destruction of all those promises journalists made to the White House—this can only serve journalism right now by restoring traditional virtues of the writing business: a sense of vocation that has nothing to do with corporate salary, a sense of citizenship that has nothing to do with Meritocratic Election, and a sense of detachment that wants nothing to do with imperialistic misadventures that are bound to cause untold suffering in another part of the world.