Gwen Ifill Has a Distinguished Record of Impartiality and Objectivity

Some people are up in arms about the fact that Gwen Ifill, who will be moderating tonight's debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, has written a book about Obama - The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama - to be published on Inauguration Day.

Here, as a professor who has taught many a young journalist at Fordham University, is my response:

1. Total objectivity in reporting, debate-moderating, or any human activity is a myth. It doesn't exist. Everyone has feelings, opinions, and therefore biases.

2. That being the case, the best anyone can hope for is that the reporter or debate-moderator behave in an even-handed, impartial way. It's not that hard. All you need to do is make sure that you give equal attention, concern, awareness, support, and criticism to both sides.

3. In the case of Gwen Ifill, we have someone with a distinguished record of impartial reporting and commentary. Can the Republicans or anyone point to a single instance in which she did not behave impartially? I recall that, even in her response to Imus's racist comments about the Rutger's women's basketball team in 2007, Ifill was objective. And she herself had been a target, earlier, of Imus's racist mouth.

I'm looking forward to Ifill's professionalism in her moderation of tonight's debate.

Imus's Racist History Means He's Not to be Believed

Given the fact that Imus made blatantly racist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team last year, why should we believe his claim that the following exchange on his WABC radio show yesterday was not racist:

Warner Wolf about "Pacman" Jones: "arrested six times since he was drafted by Tennessee in 2005"

Imus: "What color is he?"

Wolf: "He's African-American."

Imus: "Well, there you go. Now we know."

You can hear this exchange with your own ears, as well as Imus's explanation today that what he was saying about Jones was that, of course he was arrested six times, African-Americans are subject to unfair treatment by police, in the video below.

I don't believe it. Imus has a record of racist comments going back long before his labeling the Rutgers women's basketball team last year "nappy-headed ho's" - including calling African-American broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill a "cleaning lady". What he said yesterday was clearly just more of the same, and unacceptable.

As I indicated last year, this is not a question of First Amendment rights - no government agency is fining Imus or his radio station. But neither does Imus have a right to be paid millions of dollars to spew his racist garbage - Citadel, the owner of WABC Radio, has every right to fire him.

Frankly, Citadel should not have put Imus back on the air in the first place. They ought to do the right thing now, and put Imus out of his racist citadel. Otherwise, Citadel will be regarded as as racist as Imus. But I'm not holding my breath.