Caesar’s Wife

If she were a judge Gwen Ifel would have been expected to recuse herself. But journalists don’t hold themselves to that sort of standard. It isn’t clear to me they hold themselves to any standard at all. If you missed it she is writing a book, expected to be published on inauguration day, on “the age of Obama.” If he wins the election, she stands to profit. If he loses the book will likely be a flop. She doesn’t see a conflict of interest with her role as moderator in last night’s vice-presidential debate. After ignoring the issue for several days her program, The News Hour on PBS finally acknowledged the controversy but didn’t quite admit to any conflict. Excepting a few conservatives, and there aren’t many of those, most of her colleagues went along.

Ifel didn’t tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about the book. I can’t find the commission’s reaction in today’s news but I doubt it would have mattered. This is the organization that scheduled the first presidential debate on a Friday football night, effectively ensuring that several million family and community oriented folks would not be watching. Why do you suppose they did that? Surely not to get the largest or most representative audience and, it occurs to me, not to get a lot of the suburban and small town people more likely to support John McCain. Who are these commissioners anyway? How did they get control of these debates? But those are questions for another day.

I don’t remember another occasion when the media in general were quite so blatant in their political bias. The closest I can recall was their reaction to the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination. Opposition to a conservative is one thing, but the idea of a black man leaving the liberal plantation is quite another. They still haven’t forgiven him. Even today I rarely see a reference to him without an accompanying snide remark. The Sarah Palin coverage goes well beyond that and I’m not quite sure why. I suppose it has something to do with her sudden appearance on the scene as a wife, mother, and successful politician who doesn’t fit the feminist mold.

Lynne and I missed the first debate too. We were in Japan on a long planned vacation. It was quite an exotic destination for us and we had a marvelous time. We also had limited access to TV and the internet. Our news source was pretty much restricted to The International Herald Tribune, which of course is owned by the New York Times. It could be mistaken for a news letter from the Democratic National Committee. The NYT maintains a pretense of objectivity though I doubt anyone takes them seriously. The IHT seems to have dropped even the pretense. So has PBS.

Or maybe not. Sometimes I think they are so convinced of their moral high ground they are unaware of their own hypocrisy. They aren’t ignoring Gwyn Ifel’s financial interest in the outcome of this election. They don’t see that it has any bearing. But reputations are fragile things. Like Caesar’s wife they must be above suspicion. Ifel claims to value hers. If so, at the very minimum she should have disclosed the book deal before agreeing to serve as debate moderator. It would have been better to decline. By doing neither she has compromised her own integrity as well as those of The News Hour and the debate commission. That none of them see the issue is commentary on the sad state of our modern news outlets. They like to dismiss criticism as mere media bashing, but if they want to understand why the public holds them in such low regard they need look no further. We expect them to hold strong views and to express them openly in opinion pieces. We do not approve however when they contaminate the news with bias.