Brokaw Objectivity Questioned, Should Not Moderate Obama/McCain Debate

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NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw's behind-the-scenes relationship with the McCain campaign, as well as evidence of bias toward McCain in Brokaw's recent reporting on the presidential race, have brought into question his fitness to moderate the next presidential debate Oct. 7.

As the New York Times reports today, Brokaw has lately played the role of a liaison between NBC and the McCain campaign and even acted as an advocate for McCain within NBC. In an interview with the Times on Sunday, Brokaw said that he had "advocated" with NBC executives "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" owing to their perceived unfriendliness toward McCain, in effect dumping Olbermann and Matthews as anchors and using them only as commentators. Brokaw told the Times also that he had "conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign," aimed at assuring the campaign that "McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News." Brokaw said that he had been told by a senior McCain aide 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. "One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, 'If it's an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won't go'...," Brokaw said, "...My name came up, and they said, 'Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw'."

Brokaw has also drawn criticism for evidence of bias toward McCain in his recent reporting on the presidential race. On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Brokaw ended a debate between Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign and David Axelrod of the Obama campaign by stating the following: "...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." In fact, as MoveOn.org observes, the latest NBC poll has no question about Commander in Chief, and Brokaw appears to have been referring to a poll taken weeks ago. In each of NBC's last two polls, Americans chose Obama over McCain. MoveOn has called on its members to write to Brokaw at NBC and demand responsible journalism. On the same edition of "Meet the Press," Media Matters observes, Brokaw allowed Schmidt to falsely claim that McCain had "called for the firing of Don Rumsfeld" (McCain never called for Rumseld to be fired or to resign). Brokaw has also been observed suggesting that McCain's POW status means Democrats ought to lay off criticizing him (see FAIR, The Raw Story).

Concerns regarding Tom Brokaw's fitness to moderate the Oct. 7 presidential debate may be addressed to Janet Brown, director of the Commission on Presidential Debates: jb@debates.org. An online petition, Boot Brokaw, is collecting signatures to urge the CPD to switch moderators.