In debate between Clinton, Trump, moderators will be judged, too (boohoo from CBC)

With the highly anticipated first U.S. presidential debate set for Monday night, veteran journalist Jim Lehrer, a seasoned moderator of such contests, is just as happy to sit this one out.

"Oh no, heavens no," he says, when asked if he regrets not participating in the long-awaited political dust-up between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

"Having done as many as I have done — for the most part being exhilarated by the experience — it's hard not to say 'Well, you know I could do this, it might be really interesting.' But 60 to 70 per cent of me — I'm just delighted I don't have to do it."

Instead, the honours will fall to NBC News anchor Lester Holt, who will host the first debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead; N.Y., CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC News' Martha Raddatz who will moderate the second contest and Fox News' Chris Wallace, who will preside over the third.

As much as the focus will be on the candidates, attention will be drawn to the performance of the moderator. While this is certainly one of the most prestigious gigs a journalist can snag, it can be one of the most thankless jobs....

Back before the WWW, I used to listen to the CBC's evening news program For What It's Worth, which came on after NPR's All Things Liberal where I live.

As bad as NPR's idea of "news," the CBC's was far worse, if that can be believed. Many of their stores were just plain silly, although they plainly thought they were being clever.

The vast majority of politicians they interviewed were liberals, probably because Canada has very few politicians who aren't liberals. They would usually have just one politician on per night, often minor bureaucrats in Ottawa or Toronto. When they did succeed in getting someone important, you had the impression that the interviewee was only making themselves available under considerable duress, and didn't take the CBC or by extension its listenership very seriously at all.

On the rare occasions on which they couldn't avoid interviewing a conservative politician, they invariably changed the format of their questioning; they only asked procedural questions of conservatives. When is the vote scheduled, who else is on the committee, how long until the report comes out, etc.

It was particularly obvious when they had a head-to-head "debate" between a liberal and a conservative.

The liberal would get policy-oriented questions: why are you pushing for this, what do you hope to accomplish, etc. Every question an invitation for the liberal to pontificate about grand ideas and abstract goals.

Then they would address a question to the conservative, and the question would be strictly about government procedure, or about Conservative intra-party squabbling that had come to light.

Then another softball for the liberal, on and on.

The other thing I noticed was they seemed to do an inordinate number of stories about what amounted to "bathroom humor." Literally stories about bathrooms and what goes on inside bathrooms. I guess Canadians find this type of story extremely amusing/interesting.

Since the WWW and FR, I've not listened to the CBC once. Haven't even thought about them till just now.

BTW, I know the name of their program wasn't For What It's Worth. I can't even remember it, actually.

Back in ‘92 , I was watching a show with Mary Matlin and Jane Mayer as cohosts and Jim Lehrer was the guest . He was pushing a new novel he had just written . When asked about how he got the idea for the book , he explained he was walking up the stairs to the last debate with the questions under his arm when he thought “ wouldn’t the other side like to get their hands on these question “ . He was snickering when he said it . The ladies were unfazed by his answer . My question would have been “Who do you consider the other side ? And have you ever given the questions to your side ? “ . Of course that didn’t happen .

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