PBS’s Gwen Ifill shared this photo of the six anchors and said it was Wolf Blitzer’s idea.
Earlier today, six network anchors sat down with President Obama in his attempt to push his plan for Syrian intervention. The six anchors were Wolf Blitzer of CNN, Savannah Guthrie of NBC News, Chris Wallace of Fox News, Gwen Ifill of PBS, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, and Scott Pelley of CBS News. Half the anchors (Blitzer, Wallace, Ifill) are based in Washington, D.C. and the other half (Guthrie, Pelley, and Sawyer) are based in New York. According to the industry blog TVNewser, the anchors were given seven minutes to conduct their interview. The order was NBC, CNN, CBS, Fox, ABC, and PBS, and it was decided by picking into a hat. However, there was an embargo placed on the interviews until 6:00. This means that none of the footage can be shown until the embargo is placed.
While many have applauded the usually media-shy President for coming out and conducting these interviews ahead of his Oval Office address tomorrow night, he has been criticized for not including the Spanish language networks, like Univision. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos criticized the President in two tweets for not including the network, which has ratings on par with the Big Three networks.