Gwen Ifill
Gwen Ifill
Gwendolyn L. "Gwen" Ifillis an American journalist, television newscaster, and author. She is the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. She is a political analyst, and moderated the 2004 and 2008 Vice Presidential debates. She is the author of the book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNews Anchor
Date of Birth29 September 1955
CityQueens, NY
CountryUnited States of America
At public broadcasting, we call commercial broadcasting the dark side. We have the luxury of time, of not having those ever- looming commercial interruptions. We take ourselves pretty seriously. Some people say that's not a good thing. I think it's great.
I'm happy to break down barriers and be a role model, but I don't want that to be the only thing people talk about. At some point, you have to move past it... . I try not to play into it. I've had this job for a while.
Our position has never been that people should be forced out of Scouting. We have always said that the values of Scouting are universal they should be welcome to everyone who is willing to live by the Scout oath and the Scout law.
It's funny, everywhere I go some people ask me whether it's going to be a Latino breakthrough, some people ask me whether it's going to be a female breakthrough, and then I'm reminded that five years ago we didn't even know Barack Obama's name.
I find that those who voted for George W. Bush are less offended by his religious references, and those who voted for Bill Clinton did not seem offended at all when people prayed at his inauguration.
Because I would never work for a niche publication or a niche program on television and because I am a journalist and not an opinion person, my job is to try to see how many different points of view I can represent or how. It's not even a question of who you don't offend because you are always going to offend somebody. The question is how can you get people to listen to the information you have to present.
People are always surprised when they see me speak live that I have a sense of humor. And I say, Well, you know, there's not much opportunity to laugh when you're reporting the dread news of the day.
If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.
History shows that people often do cast their votes for amorphous reasons-the most powerful among them being the need for change. Just ask Bill Clinton.
In the media universe we're in, where there are people screaming on one end, there is no problem at all with having a little bit of extra politeness.
People do still cheer for the President. And some of the military audiences are more likely to cheer than others. I have seen him speak lately in front of groups like Freedom House, where the applause was a long time coming.
The theme with Hillary Clinton is, she wants to know where the outrage is. And we've found where the outrage is. It's in Howard Dean.
Nobody does commercial TV out of the goodness of their heart. There has to be a market-driven financial incentive, an economic imperative. Katie was wildly successful for so long, she created a market incentive. It made economic sense for CBS.
Tony Blair barely escaped this year, and now George W. Bush, if elections were to be held today, would be in a serious challenge as well.