IMPARTIAL? VP-DEBATE HOST PENS BOOK LAUDING OBAMA
(By MICHELLE MALKIN, New York Post) - TOMORROW, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill will serve as moderator for the first and only vice-presidential debate. But there is nothing "moderate" about where Ifill stands on Barack Obama.
She's so far in the tank for the Democratic presidential candidate, her oxygen delivery line is running out.
In an imaginary world where liberal journalists are held to the same standards as everyone else, Ifill would be required to make a full disclosure at the start of the debate. She would be required to turn to the cameras and tell the national audience that she has a book coming out on Jan. 20, 2009 - a date that just happens to coincide with the inauguration of the next president of the United States.
The title of Ifill's book? "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Nonpartisan, my foot.
She's so far in the tank for the Democratic presidential candidate, her oxygen delivery line is running out.
In an imaginary world where liberal journalists are held to the same standards as everyone else, Ifill would be required to make a full disclosure at the start of the debate. She would be required to turn to the cameras and tell the national audience that she has a book coming out on Jan. 20, 2009 - a date that just happens to coincide with the inauguration of the next president of the United States.
The title of Ifill's book? "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Nonpartisan, my foot.
posted by BP News Bureau | 9:00 AM
4 Comments:
From Fox News:
Gwen Ifill, the moderator of this week’s debate between Governor Palin and Senator Biden is writing a new book to come out in January: The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.
Here are questions for you: is it a conflict of interest since she is writing about Senator Obama and wants her book to sell (i.e. make money)? Should she be moderating the debate this Thursday?
My answer: it all depends on whether she disclosed it to the McCain - Palin campaign and they said ok. Or if the book is not friendly to Senator Obama, then the same disclosure to him and ok from him. That is the way it is done in the legal business — called full disclosure. (I suppose, regardless of friendly or not to either candidate, full disclosure to both was necessary. ) Otherwise? it is a conflict of interest and the offended ticket should pull out of the debate…or she should. By the way, it could be a book about an important issue …but that does not take away the issue of conflict.
From Fox News:
I confirmed for us here on GretaWire: the McCain campaign did NOT know about Gwen Ifill’s book (I think I told them when I made my efforts - emails about midnight - to find out!) I am stunned….the campaign (actually both) should have been told before the campaign agreed to have her moderate. It simply is not fair - in law, this would create a mistrial.
From Radio Vice Online:
Oh Brother. Imagine, if you will ladies and gentlemen, a debate moderated by Rush Limbaugh … ok, maybe Sean Hannity, ok maybe … never mind.
From National Review Online:
The problem with the Ifill selection is not that she is for Obama (how could the media easily find any moderator who was not?), but that her Age of Obama encomium is, according to press releases, set to appear on January 20, Inauguration Day — the implication being that the book will sell far more copies as a timely analysis of Obama just as he assumes office. Yes, moderators are usually liberal, and yes, authors of books on contemporary politics usually try to find timing gimmicks to sell them; but in this case, the problem is that Ifill's book stands to do far better should Obama be elected, and her publishers seem in advance to have recognized, and thus counted on, that. That's the rub, and the result is that it will make it hard for her to seem unbiased when moderating a debate in which one side is trying to demonstrate to the nation why we should not have embrace an age of Obama. As a matter of ethics, this is a no brainer.
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