Gwen Ifill: Defensive much?

While on the subject of journalists' "strikingly defensive" tones, that reminded me of a moment on the ususally-quite-good Washington Week in Review, hosted by Gwen Ifill on PBS. Last Friday night's show brought up the issue of the DSM, albeit fleetingly. Strangely, even though Tony Blair's visit to the US was one of the main points of discussion, none of the respected group of senior inside-the-beltway journos thought to bring up the subject of the DSM until the dying seconds of the show. Interestingly, it was David Sanger of the NYT (the same David Sanger who wrote the "strikingly defensive" piece on the new briefing paper in today's paper) who brought up the issue in a last-minute question to Alexis Simendinger of the National Journal. He instantly downplayed the significance of the question as follows: "Alexis, you know, one of the sideshows of [Bush and Blair's] appearance together was they were actually asked in public together for the first time about this Downing Street memo" [my emphasis].

So now that "this Downing Street memo" thing was just a "sideshow", Sanger asked what it was about (you can read the original transcript here). Simendinger began to answer Sanger's question with the words, "Precook the intelligence" -- which was all she said before Sanger jumped back in: "That's right. There are other readings of that memo as well . . ." Simendinger apparently took the hint, because she then moved off the "precooking" part and focused her answer on how Blair and Bush were in lockstep on their answers ("No daylight" was her phrase -- "no s**t, Sherlock!" was my response: what about the substance of the charges?)

But then Ifill stepped in, and this was the most disillusioning aspect of the show, since I normally regard Ifill quite highly. After acknowledging that she had actually asked Blair about the memo in a News Hour interview earlier that week (incredibly, though, she did not ask a follow-up question on the matter!), she happily agreed with Simendinger that "they stayed lockstep on their answer." Then she put the matter to rest by paraprasing Blair's response, safely minimalizing it, and editorializing in her "we're wrapping up now" tone:

IFILL: It was just "This did not happen. I don't know what this memo is. You can just ignore it. We did what we did. We took it to the UN." We've been hearing that answer for a couple years. So I don't know how many different ways you can ask the same question.

Thank you all very much. This was a very good conversation. We'll leave it there for this week.

So that's that then: "I don't know how many different ways you can ask the same question." But when she had the chance, she did not ask Blair even one follow-up question on the matter! Safe to say my mouth was gaping open at this point. Defensive much, Gwen? Couldn't you possibly be thinking "I had a gaping opportunity to press Blair on this, and I blew it? Possibly? Here's a good question for Ifill: "What would Jeremy do?" (Jeremy Paxman, that is.)

Another clear example of the mainstream media's "It's Old News Now/We've Covered That/Everybody Knows About it/It's not That Big a Deal/Let’s Move On" tactic. Ho hum. I think I have to start dishing out "Officer Barbrady" awards to American journalists. Gwen Ifill gets one!