Vp Debate Fairness

[KnightofChrist]

The book IS by a [b]pro[/b]-obama book. It is not a negitive obama book is it? Nope.

Gwen Ifill has shown liberal bias before. Two examples below... As for Palin you likely under estimate her. She was a good debater in the Alaska Governor race.

[url="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2008/10/01/gwen-ifill-pro-obama-anti-palin"]Gwen Ifill: Pro-Obama and Anti-Palin[/url]
By Tim Graham


Friday’s Washington Post carried an ad from PBS touting their two TV debate moderators: "Objective. Impartial. Independent. The NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill bring PBS’s tradition of integrity to the most important conversations in America – so you can make up your own mind."

Sadly, that ad is not accurate. Even before addressing whether "independence" is demonstrated by Ifill writing a new book celebrating Barack Obama’s bold "Breakthrough," Ifill’s questions in the vice presidential debate in 2004 displayed an undeniable bias against Vice President Cheney.

For example, she pressed Cheney to attack Democratic nominee John Edwards personally: "President Bush has derided John Kerry for putting a trial lawyer on the ticket. You yourself have said that lawsuits are partly to blame for higher medical costs. Are you willing to say that John Edwards, sitting here, has been part of the problem?"

Ifill then turned around and asked the Democrat if he was feeling pained at the attack she had just requested: "Senator Edwards, new question to you, same topic. Do you feel personally attacked when Vice President Cheney talks about liability reform and tort reform and the president talks about having a trial lawyer on the ticket?"

The PBS host also pressed Cheney with a Tim Russert-style question on Iran: "Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran because, quote, ‘Unilateral sanctions almost never work.’ After four years as Vice President now, and with Iran having been declared by your administration as part of the ‘Axis of Evil,’ do you still believe that we should lift sanctions on Iran?" Cheney said no, and that in 2000, he was talking about unilateral sanctions, not universal sanctions. Some viewers were put off after the Edwards counterattack, when Cheney said "I can respond, Gwen, but it's going to take more than 30 seconds," and she said "Well, that's all you've got." She said Democrats loved it ("they thought I was being snippy"), but she said that wasn’t her intent.

When Ifill turned to Edwards for a question on Israel policy, there wasn’t an equally tough question for him. She said the U.S. seemed sadly "absent" under Bush: "Today, a senior member of Islamic Jihad was killed in Gaza. There have been suicide bombings, targeted assassinations, mortar attacks, all of this continuing at a time when the United States seems absent in the peace-making process. What would your administration do?"

Ifill’s toughest question to Edwards underlined that he had the least governmental experience of any vice-presidential nominee since 1976. She also pressed Edwards from the left on Kerry’s promise not to raise taxes and their opposition to gay marriage. But her last question seemed designed to aid Kerry: "Senator Kerry changed his mind about whether to vote to authorize the President to go to war. President Bush changed his mind about whether a Homeland Security department was a good idea or a 9/11 Commission was a good idea. What's wrong with a little flip-flop every now and then?"

When Palin was picked, Ifill announced on the August 29 Washington Week that the idea of Palin attracting Hillary Clinton voters was strange: "I want to question that whole theory, why Hillary Clinton voters would actually vote for someone who is so famously anti-abortion, for instance and other issues."

On the September 5 Washington Week, Ifill defined the party's bases as the Clintonites vs. the evangelical far right who were Palin's natural supporters: “I also was struck this week and last week that both parties – and maybe this is what happens after a party convention – but they both came away having played to and sealed down their base. Barack Obama had to take care of his Clinton problem. And John McCain had to take care of his evangelical, far right problem.”

There’s seemingly no end in sight for biased PBS moderators, since Republican debate negotiators keep accepting them, allowing PBS to suggest that decision endorses the false notion of their objectivity and impartiality.

[url="http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/lyndsi-thomas/2008/08/25/pbss-ifill-fawns-over-michelle-obama-msnbc"]PBS's Ifill Fawns Over Michelle Obama on MSNBC[/url]
By Lyndsi Thomas


Gwen Ifill of PBS, MSNBC News Live | NewsBusters.orgLive from Denver, Colorado, on Monday, Brian Williams hosted the 1 p.m. hour of MSNBC's "News Live" and featured guests Gwen Ifill of PBS and Michele Norris of NPR to talk about Michelle Obama’s upcoming primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention. The segment turned out to be a love-fest of Michelle Obama and her humble roots.

Williams started off the segment by asking the typical question of "what does Michelle Obama have to do tonight in this hall?" Ifill immediately went into gushing mode, first about Senator Ted Kennedy and then about Obama:

Michelle Obama has to find a way to be more amazing and more emotional than Ted Kennedy. If it looks like Ted Kennedy actually walks across that stage tonight and appears in some fashion in person and speaks, it’s gonna be an emotional highpoint. Michelle Obama, however, also has to deal with preconceptions about who she is. A lot of people have never seen anything that looks like a Michelle Obama before. She’s educated, she’s beautiful, she’s tall, she tells you what she thinks and they hope that she can tell a story about Barack Obama and about herself.

Williams then threw in some cooing of his own by describing Obama as "a mother of two girls, and the head of a family that has to sustain itself while Dad is otherwise occupied for the last couple of months. No easy feat." Ifill then rhapsodized over the Obama family:

Two amazingly precocious girls who walked out on the stage today at the sound check rehearsal with them and wanted to play with the gavel. I mean, they have the ringlets, they have the little girl dresses. This family wants to let you know they are Cosby with Norman Rockwell overtones. They want people to look at them and say, “oh, I get you. I understand you. You don’t threaten me. I get this family.” That’s what Michelle Obama’s trying to do.

Later, after Williams described Michelle Obama’s "south Chicago experience" as "more of the kind of American story than [Barack Obama's] Kansas, Kenya, South Pacific, you know his bizarre life story," Ifill talked up Michelle Obama’s humble roots:

It’s rooted. It is rooted. Her father was a city worker, a retired pump operator who fought all his life with a congenital disease and never complained, never missed a day of work. Her mother, who is 71 years old, takes care of the kids when they’re traveling. She's here with them, Mary Ann Robinson, everybody will find her instantly recognizable as the grandma who indulges the kids with the treats.

The segment's other guest, NPR’s Michele Norris, also got in on the praising of Michelle Obama. In response to a question by Williams about how Obama could compensate for the "emotional highpoint" of Senator Kennedy's potential appearance during her own speech, Norris gushed:

There's a lot of pressure on her but I did get a chance to talk to her earlier today and you wouldn’t know it by talking to her. I mean, she's an athlete so she carries that pressure very easily on her shoulders. She's quite confident about what she has to do tonight. She knows what she has to do. And as Gwen said, she has to show people that if they look closely, if they listen closely, if they look at this family tableaux which is unlike anything that we've ever seen on a convention stage, that people will see something that looks different but if they listen carefully they might hear something that resonates in their own lives. She's going to talk tonight not just about their triumphs, she's going to talk about their struggles. How they both come from fairly humble roots. How they had to climb up the rough side of the mountain to get where they are now and they’re hoping that people in hearing that message will say, "Oh, I learned something about Barack Obama that resonates in my own family. I know someone who’s had a similar struggle." That's her goal tonight.

Williams ended the segment by asking if Obama suffers "any delusions or any disappointments that, you know, in some quarters her negatives are high?" In answering the question, Norris touted that Michelle and Barack Obama "together made a compact at the beginning of this campaign that when they got to the end of the process they were gonna look at each other and see the same person across the table that started on this journey and they were gonna try very hard not to let this change them." Norris also worried that because of the "angry black woman" characterization of Obama, she might not be able to "rise up and defend her husband."

A transcript of Monday’s "News Live" segment, which aired at 1:04 p.m., follows:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, host: Let’s talk about tonight’s duel themes at this convention. There’s going to be an emotional tribute to Ted Kennedy. All afternoon long yesterday it was rumored the senior Senator from Massachusetts would perhaps try to make the trip. Then we heard that his doctors wouldn’t allow it. Then we heard last night that he had indeed slipped into Denver and plans call for him to make at least a brief appearance before this convention. We’ll hear from Caroline Kennedy tonight as well. Then when the networks enter the prime of the primetime schedule, 10 to 11 o’clock east coast time, the evening gets handed over to Michelle Obama. We’ll hear her introduction from her brother, a tape will be played, a short biography of Michelle Obama. And then we will hear from her. And along those lines to talk about tonight, we’re joined by two old friends, Michele Norris from NPR and Gwen Ifill from PBS. Gwen, we’ll begin with you. Tonight’s overall theme, and as they say in politics, what does Michelle Obama have to do tonight in this hall?

GWEN IFILL, PBS: Michelle Obama has to find a way to be more amazing and more emotional than Ted Kennedy. If it looks like Ted Kennedy actually walks across that stage tonight and appears in some fashion in person and speaks, it’s gonna be an emotional highpoint. Michelle Obama, however, also has to deal with preconceptions about who she is. A lot of people have never seen anything that looks like a Michelle Obama before. She’s educated, she’s beautiful, she’s tall, she tells you what she thinks and they hope that she can tell a story about Barack Obama and about herself.

WILLIAMS: And a mother of two girls, and the head of a family that has to sustain itself while Dad is otherwise occupied for the last couple of months. No easy feat.

IFILL: Two amazingly precocious girls who walked out on the stage today at the sound check rehearsal with them and wanted to play with the gavel. I mean, they have the ringlets, they have the little girl dresses. This family wants to let you know they are Cosby with Norman Rockwell overtones. They want people to look at them and say, “oh, I get you. I understand you. You don’t threaten me. I get this family.” That’s what Michelle Obama’s trying to do.

WILLIAMS: This video tape we’re looking at was a quick walk through --

IFILL: See the ringlets?

WILLIAMS: Yep. The aforementioned precocious daughters and who among us doesn’t have at least one of those at home? Michelle Obama getting just the basic feel of the stage. Very common among people who have a date with the podium later in the evening or later in the convention. And Michele, I think Gwen raised such an important issue. We -- not to be gross about it, but we don’t know about Ted Kennedy’s physical appearance. We don’t know about his physical abilities tonight. All we know is he’s in the fight of his life, he’s been involved in a rigorous chemotherapy treatment program, so, you know, this, that will be the prior emotional highpoint and then, oh by the way, Mrs. Obama please have at it.

MICHELE NORRIS, NPR: It’s tough. I mean, she’s the keynote speaker but Ted Kennedy’s appearance could be the emotional highpoint of the evening. There’s a lot of pressure on her but I did get a chance to talk to her earlier today and you wouldn’t know it by talking to her. I mean, she’s an athlete so she carries that pressure very easily on her shoulders. She’s quite confident about what she has to do tonight. She knows what she has to do. And as Gwen said, she has to show people that if they look closely, if they listen closely, if they look at this family tableaux which is unlike anything that we’ve ever seen on a convention stage, that people will see something that looks different but if they listen carefully they might hear something that resonates in their own lives. She’s going to talk tonight not just about their triumphs, she’s going to talk about their struggles. How they both come from fairly humble roots. How they had to climb up the rough side of the mountain to get where they are now and they’re hoping that people in hearing that message will say, “Oh, I learned something about Barack Obama that resonates in my own family. I know someone who’s had a similar struggle.” That’s her goal tonight.

WILLIAMS: And if anything, her south Chicago experience, Gwen, is more of the kind of American story than his Kansas, Kenya, South Pacific, you know his bizarre life story in the kin of most Americans.

IFILL: It’s rooted. It is rooted. Her father was a city worker, a retired pump operator who fought all his life with a congenital disease and never complained, never missed a day of work. Her mother, who is 71 years old, takes care of the kids when they’re traveling. She’s here with them, Mary Ann Robinson, everybody will find her instantly recognizable as the Grandma who indulges the kids with the treats. And they’re hope -- and her brother who will be introducing her, is a basketball coach at Oregon, I think, and he is, um, looks exactly like her. I mean, they look like they were spit out in the same -- also tall and also went to Princeton.

WILLIAMS: Michele, does she suffer any delusions or any disappointments that, you know, in some quarters her negatives are high?

NORRIS: You know, I asked her about that and particularly how the word “angry” is so often attached to her name. And she, you know, she didn’t quite do what Barack Obama did and sort of brush the lint off her shoulder in suggesting that it doesn’t bother her, but, you could, if you look carefully you could see that it’s something that does perhaps get a little bit under her skin, but she said that she tries very hard to create a psychological and emotional bubble and that she and Barack Obama together made a compact at the beginning of this campaign that when they got to the end of the process they were gonna look at each other and see the same person across the table that started on this journey and they were gonna try very hard not to let this change them. The difficult thing is whether or not this hamstrings her in any way because, you know, in a rough and tumble campaign there are moments where she might want to rise up and defend her husband and there’s this fine line between assertiveness and aggressiveness. And if she’s so often labeled as the angry black woman, can she throw in an elbow if she has to? If the situation call for it?

IFILL: Can he?

WILLIAMS: Well, that’s a question for the next three days. Um, my thanks to both of you. What a great conversation to kind of set up the night and the week. Michele Norris and Gwen Ifill, old friends both.

Edited October 2, 2008 by KnightofChrist

[BG45]

I like how no one mentions the obvious here. This book was hardly a secret; if McCain's campaign can't vet a moderator with a book that had a publicly available release date, then how can they vet a VP?

That said Baldwin 08 if anyone pondered who I was voting for. Conservative, but without the blatant failures of the campaign of John McCain. A man who has my deep respect as a man of honor, integrity, and ability.

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='BG45' post='1668102' date='Oct 1 2008, 10:04 PM']I like how no one mentions the obvious here. This book was hardly a secret; if McCain's campaign can't vet a moderator with a book that had a publicly available release date, then how can they vet a VP?

That said Baldwin 08 if anyone pondered who I was voting for. Conservative, but without the blatant failures of the campaign of John McCain. A man who has my deep respect as a man of honor, integrity, and ability.[/quote]

I'm a little disappointed, but then again most in the media are liberals anyway so it would have been highly unlikely to find a unbiased mod. With that in mind there is also the possibility McCain's camp knew of Ifill's book, knew it showed her bias and chose her because of it, showing the liberal bias of the media.

But, perhaps they thought of the backlash they would receive if they protested Ifill being the mod. Keep in mind that more than likely the race card would have been played. She seems already to be playing that card in reply to complaints about [url="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2008/10/01/gwen-ifill-plays-race-card"]her book[/url].

[Mercy me]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1667989' date='Oct 1 2008, 10:02 PM']You have no proof for that. She has written an acadamic book about the role of black politicians makeing incursions into the political power structure. By your logic she also has a vested interest in seeing Colin Powell, whome her book also looks at, elected president.

The Palin camp agread to this interview and has made no objection that I know of.

I do not have any hard proof for it, but I suspect this is now being raised to cover for Mrs. Palin's likely embarrassing failure at tomorrow's debate.

I just base that on the timeing of this issue being raised. This has been lined up for quite a while, Palin humiliates herself on interview after interview, now suddenly the moderator is obviosuly biased.[/quote]

What I am saying is that she has a book about the advances of black candidates coming out on inauguration day. It traces the political advances of black candidates through the civil rights era to present. The keys are the advances made by Obama in this campaign.

What I am saying is that the election is make or break for her book and here she is moderating what will most likely be the most closely watched debate in the campaign. She has a personal financial interest in making Palin look bad. After all, certainly fewer people will want her book if the central player has failed to win the race.

What I am saying is that Ifill clearly has a stake in the race. There is an appearance of impropriety before this even starts. Ifill for the sake of her journalistic integrity should have passed or at the very least publicly disclose this.

Colin Powell is featured in the book but last I checked he is neither running for President nor participating in the VP debate.

Hassan don't bury your head in the sand. This looks looks bad.

[KnightofChrist]

Nor is Powell's name on the front cover, or the subtitle.

[Fidei Defensor]

What we seem to be forgetting here is that every person who doesn't live under a rock in the United States probably has formed some kind of opinion about the candidates. It doesn't really matter who they choose to be the moderator, they are going to have an opinion one way or the other. You can't help but not. The two candidates are as different as night and day in terms of policy.

That being said, the moderator does little more than read questions to them. Does it really matter who they choose?

[CatholicCid]

[quote name='fidei defensor' post='1668208' date='Oct 2 2008, 12:36 AM']What we seem to be forgetting here is that every person who doesn't live under a rock in the United States probably has formed some kind of opinion about the candidates. It doesn't really matter who they choose to be the moderator, they are going to have an opinion one way or the other. You can't help but not. The two candidates are as different as night and day in terms of policy.

That being said, the moderator does little more than read questions to them. Does it really matter who they choose?[/quote]

Not every person who doesn't live under a rock goes out an publishes a book concerning the subject matter they are to be unbiased on.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='BG45' post='1668102' date='Oct 1 2008, 11:04 PM']I like how no one mentions the obvious here. This book was hardly a secret; if McCain's campaign can't vet a moderator with a book that had a publicly available release date, then how can they vet a VP?

That said Baldwin 08 if anyone pondered who I was voting for. Conservative, but without the blatant failures of the campaign of John McCain. A man who has my deep respect as a man of honor, integrity, and ability.[/quote]

I do like Sarah Palin; I think she's fantastic. But, yes---they screwed up on the moderator. And McCain is busy voting on a bill loaded with over 300 pages of earmarks after making an anti-earmark stand a centerpiece of his campaign.

And just when it seemed that they were running a great campaign and McCain had come around enough for me to vote for him... they go right back to making stupid mistakes. How hard is it to check Amazon? Or Wikipedia?

It seems that I really will be voting straight ticket Libertarian again this year.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='fidei defensor' post='1668208' date='Oct 2 2008, 12:36 AM']What we seem to be forgetting here is that every person who doesn't live under a rock in the United States probably has formed some kind of opinion about the candidates. It doesn't really matter who they choose to be the moderator, they are going to have an opinion one way or the other. You can't help but not. The two candidates are as different as night and day in terms of policy.

That being said, the moderator does little more than read questions to them. Does it really matter who they choose?[/quote]

Well, I don't think she just reads the questions-- I think she composes them. That does make a difference, imho.

They used to have a panel of questioners with one moderator. What ever happened to that? To me, that would make more sense.

[Didymus]

[quote name='dominicansoul' post='1667767' date='Oct 1 2008, 02:51 PM']It is terribly wrong to allow Obama to win. I'll take an "alleged" pro-lifer to a sworn baby killer any day.

Speaking against the only viable ticket that gives some hope for the pro-life cause does nothing but help Obama...[/quote]

Obama kills babies???

We should tell someone

[Didymus]

It seems that many of the McCain supporters on here are significantly attracted to false dichotomies in their promotion of McCain.

[kenrockthefirst]

From a practical perspective, what difference does it really make? Gwen Ifill will ask her questions, and both candidates will speak to their respective speaking points whether or not they have anything to do with what they've been asked. This is exactly what happened in the first debate between McCain and Obama.

In addition, unless you're going to have a robot moderate the debate, the moderator is going to be "biased."

Finally, if the VP candidate on the Republican side wasn't such a lightweight so obviously out of her depth, it wouldn't matter. Ideological purity is not going to help Palin, you know, actually know stuff.

Edited October 2, 2008 by kenrockthefirst

[dominicansoul]

[quote name='Didymus' post='1668284' date='Oct 2 2008, 07:21 AM']Obama kills babies???

We should tell someone [/quote]

[Fidei Defensor]

[quote name='CatholicCid' post='1668225' date='Oct 1 2008, 11:26 PM']Not every person who doesn't live under a rock goes out an publishes a book concerning the subject matter they are to be unbiased on.[/quote]
But that doesn't change the fact that they have an opinion. Just because you don't know their opinion doesn't mean they are unbiased.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1667576' date='Oct 1 2008, 08:50 AM']"Without core convictions." McCain's playing pro-life voters like a fiddle.\[/quote]

definitely. very much so