DU'ers-can you give me an analysis of the moderators of

[mourningdove92]

the debates? To be quite honest, I don't know much of anything about any of them.

I know Jim Lehrer is from PBS. Charles Gibson is from ABC. Bob Schieffer is from CBS and Gwen Ifill is also from PBS.

What are they like? I get most of my news from the internet. Lately I have TIVOd for CBS news. I used to watch cable news, but can't stomach it anymore. So I have to claim ignorance on these four.

[AP]

1. I believe both Jeffrey Toobin (Too Close to Call) and Blumenthal

(The Clinton Wars) give Leher a scathing review on his moderting the Gore-Bush debates (or maybe it was just one or the other).

In one of their books, the author describes the one time Bush got in hot water and how Lehrer bailed him out of it.

When reading the book, I remembered the event described and felt the same way. But I can't remember now which line of q'ing it was.

[HFishbine]

2. Lehrer and Schieffer

Lehrer moderated one of the Gore/Bush debates and was pretty slack in enforcing the debate rules (which Gore took advantage of, to his detriment, in my opinion.)

Schieffer has always struck me as pretty fair. If he has a personal bias, he keeps it pretty well hidden.