“Take that, Bibi.” – Gwen Ifill
Since I am not a fan of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS) reports as “news,” I learned of the most recent Obama administration pandering of Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of the PBS NewsHour, in a newspaper account.
Ifill during an interview with Obama. (pamellageller.com)
When it became known that the president had secured the required Democrat support in the Senate to ensure the Iran deal could not be blocked by opponents, Ifill, in what was described as a digital spiking of the football, tweeted “Take that, Bibi.” The reference, of course, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed Congress in opposition to the deal.
Ifill also retweeted a cartoon illustration from the Obama administration, based on the illustration of a bomb Netanyahu used to present his case against the nuclear deal. The administration’s illustration shows a pair of scissors cutting the fuse on the bomb.
With numerous angry e-mails in his inbox, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler sought to respond, but wasn’t satisfied with Ifill’s, “(I) should have been clearer that it was their (the White House) argument, not mine.” He called her original tweet, “inexcusable for an experienced journalist who is the co-anchor of a nightly news program watched by millions of people over the course of a week. But PBS and the NewsHour are bigger than any individual and tweeting does not appear to be a tool, in these cases, that is appropriate for maintaining credibility…”
While not elaborating, Getler said, “It is not the first time I have written about Ifill and tweets.” It goes back to the Republican National Convention in 2012, when Ifill and co-worker Judy Woodruff tweeted support for journalist David Chalian, who was fired for making a derogatory comment about Mitt and Ann Romney when he thought his microphone had been turned off.
Commenting that Republican convention officials had no problem with African-Americans suffering as a result of Hurricane Isaac, Chalian said, “They’re not concerned at all. They’re happy to have a party with black people drowning.” He later apologized to Mitt and Ann Romney for making an “inappropriate and thoughtless joke.”
Meanwhile, Ifill and Woodruff tweeted that Chalian “is God’s gift to political journalism.”
Getler previously criticized Ifill for attending private spin sessions at the White House, and for hosting a fund-raising event for a gay group that honored Kathleen Sebelius for her role in getting ObamaCare passed.
Finally, it was Ifill, who mocked Sarah Palin because she slipped up on a date – 1773 versus 1776 ; and it was Ifill who was awarded the moderator position for the Biden-Palin debate even though it was known she had a contract to write a book about the progress of blacks in the Obama administration.
Be aware, fellow taxpayers, that you are funding a near half-billion dollar annual grant to PBS through the departments of Labor, HHS and Education.
“Supporters of public broadcasting argue that public radio and television broadcasters, free of commercial interruption, provide perhaps the last bastion of balanced and objective information, news …” –Congressional Research Service
