Gwen Ifill Plays It Straight

Grumpy left-wing whiners overran a chat this afternoon with PBS’ Gwen Ifill, in which she failed to respond to repeated baitings on Terry Schiavo, the Bush administration, Tom Delay, and the Saudi government. Finally, one participant wrote, “Did I miss the email that said this is beat up on Gwen day?”

(It’s always sort of fascinating that everyone seems to assume that journalists will naturally share their own biases–and yet if a journalist ever shows or hints at bias in a different direction they’re instantly attacked.)

Then at the end of the chat, someone who obviously wasn’t paying much attention asked in a panic: “There was an astonishing announcement on CBS radio news this morning that PBS was pulling the plug on Washington Week — that the last show would be this June 24. Is that true? I couldn’t believe my ears. How do I protest against this? I’m equally astonished that I don’t see a mention of it anywhere on pbs.org. What’s the story?”

Gwen very nicely pointed out that the questioner probably meant Wall Street Week.

Boy, don’t you just love the internets? They allow anyone to fly off the handle before they need to bother gathering facts. That questioner must have been a blogger.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting this Thursday, February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.