PBSGwen Ifill, a senior correspondent for PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and moderator and managing editor of that network’s “Washington Week,” will moderate the vice presidential debate at Washington University on October 2, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced on Tuesday, August 5.
Ifill, who moderated the 2004 debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney, worked at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, the Baltimore Evening Sun and NBC before coming to PBS. She also serves on the boards of the Harvard Institute for Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Museum of Television and Radio and the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston.
The vice presidential debate will be 90 minutes long, divided into eight ten-minute segments each devoted to one issue-both domestic and international-with time for closing statements by each candidate. The candidates have yet to be determined. The debate will begin at 8 p.m. Central Time on October 2.
Jim Lehrer of the NewsHour, Tom Brokaw of NBC News and Bob Schieffer of CBS News will host the presidential debates.
Also on August 5, the Obama campaign formally accepted the Commission on Presidential Debates’ proposal for three presidential and one vice presidential debate. The McCain campaign had previously accepted the debate format.