Tom Brokaw Taking Sides
by Todd Beeton, Tue Sep 30, 2008 at 10:37:17 AM EDT
Wasn't Tom Brokaw supposed to be, umm, neutral or something? I guess that goes out the window once NBC's access to the Republican candidate begins to be threatened, in which case Brokaw is perfectly willing to exert influence in order to mollify the McCain campaign.
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.In an interview here after Sunday's broadcast, Mr. Brokaw said that over the summer he had "advocated" within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Their expressions of strong political opinions from the MSNBC anchor desk has run counter to the more traditional role Mr. Brokaw played on "NBC Nightly News" for more than two decades. NBC said earlier this month that the two hosts would mostly relinquish their anchor duties to Mr. Gregory, while being present as analysts.
No, much better to do it behind the scenes, real quiet like.
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.
But where does this assistance he's providing to the McCain campaign -- to make sure that they don't think NBC is in the tank for Obama and thus, hurt access -- end? On Sunday, Brokaw brought it into the moderator's chair.
From a MoveOn.org e-mail today.
At the end [of Sunday's MTP], Tom Brokaw did something strange. He opted to give himself the last word and told the audience: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.
Fairness? Really? Is that what you call using your platform to inject a piece of completely extraneous pro-McCain propaganda into the conversation? Not to mention the fact that, as with most propaganda, it wasn't true.
MoveOn does the digging:
We checked, and the latest NBC poll actually has no question about Commander in Chief. We contacted NBC about this, and it turns out Brokaw was referring to a poll taken weeks ago--right after the Republican convention and well before Friday's big national security debate. And in each of NBC's last two polls, Americans chose Obama over McCain.
Classic.
Contact Tom Brokaw today and demand that he correct the record and apologize.
Tags: John McCain, tom brokaw (all tags)
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