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Tom Brokaw on the fine art of political coverage

Get a bunch of journalists together for a teleconference interview, and what do they talk about? The state of journalism, for starters.

But when the interview subject is Tom Brokaw, now interim moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the conversation also drifts to coverage of the presidential campaign and the changing demographics of the West.

Brokaw became host of “Meet the Press” last month, when moderator Tim Russert died of a heart attack. The former “NBC Nightly News” anchor volunteered to fill his friend’s shoes through the presidential election in November.

“We have to remember that these elections are about voters and candidates and not about us,” Brokaw says, recalling coverage of Democratic primaries while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was still in the race.

His concern was over the analysis given to earlier primaries while voters downstream in other states were waiting to have their say, especially those who wanted to vote for Clinton.

“I’d like to think we (journalists) learned a lesson from that, but I’m not entirely sure,” he says.

Other lessons learned by journalists were punctuated recently by the release of former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s much-maligned memoir, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” in which he alleges the Bush administration used propaganda to sell the Iraq war and blasts the White House press corps for being too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

Public perception and criticism of the Washington press during the past eight years also has followed a similar vein — that reporters failed to ask government officials tough questions and press the Bush administration for answers.

“I think a lot of hard questions were asked, but there was a lot of deception on the part of the administration — intentional or unintentional,” Brokaw says. “Of course, we say now there are things we ought to have known. It’s not that we weren’t asking the questions, it’s that we weren’t getting the answers.”

Meanwhile, as moderator of “Meet the Press,” Brokaw is now gearing up for the Democratic National Convention next month in Denver and pondering how much of Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech will be carried on NBC. (It will be carried on MSNBC in its entirety.)

“Conventions have become not the places where you do the party business,” Brokaw says. “They’ve become theatrical.”

And Brokaw should know: He’s been there, covering every presidential election since 1968. He also served as NBC’s White House correspondent during the Watergate years and was, of course, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor and managing editor for more than 20 years. Since retiring, he’s continued reporting and providing expertise to NBC News on election coverage and breaking news events as a special correspondent. He’s also filed a number of documentaries, including the Emmy-winning “Global Warming: What You Need to Know with Tom Brokaw” for the Discovery Channel.

And he maintained a close friendship with Russert over the years, speaking almost daily and comparing notes about how particular “Meet the Press” shows went. Brokaw has said he will continue to follow Russert’s template of aggressive questioning based on guests’ public records. However, he said he would like to incorporate some new voices on the show, apart from the standard Washington insiders.

And for a man who’s interviewed numerous world leaders, including former French President Jacques Chirac, President George W. Bush and former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, who’s the one guest he’d like most on the show?

“Well, I’d like to get Osama Bin Laden,” Brokaw says, adding that beyond that he wouldn’t tip his hand as to any future guests.

Other subjects which Brokaw, who makes his home on a Montana ranch, wants to focus coverage on are the issues Westerners are facing, including those involving energy resources, conservation and clean water, as well as their cooperative approach to finding solutions.

“I believe the big issue for the West in the foreseeable future will be between development and people moving in and the traditional values of the West of (maintaining) open spaces,” Brokaw says.

Meanwhile, the search is on at NBC for a permanent replacement for moderator of “Meet the Press.” Some names that have been mentioned as top in-house candidates include David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews. NBC Universal staff, however, did not answer questions as to the current status of the candidate search.

And as a veteran political reporter, Brokaw had some advice for his interviewers about covering campaigns and facing the ubiquitous criticism that the media at times can be too far left or too far right. Develop standards for measuring and comparing what candidates are saying and don’t be distracted by the voices to the right and to the left of you, he says.

As for those who think the criticism of media coverage is tough now?

“You should have been around in 1968,” he says.