Gwen Ifill attacked by conservative website for role in LGBT clinic gala

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Gwen Ifill is under fire from a conservative website for accepting to be an emcee at a gala being held by a non profit community health clinic in Washington. The website, Newsbusters, said that they felt she was crossing the ‘Obama line’ by emceeing this this event. The clinic hosting the gala is “Whitman-Walker Health, formerly the Whitman Walker Clinic specializes in HIV/AIDS care and, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender care.” The Huffington Post reports:

WASHINGTON — Gwen Ifill, the author and “PBS News Hour” correspondent, is under fire from a conservative media outlet over her decision to serve as emcee at Thursday’s annual fundraiser for Whitman-Walker Health, a nonprofit community health clinic in Washington. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will receive an award at the event.

Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, which runs the website Newsbusters, wrote on Thursday that Ifill was crossing an “Obama line” by emceeing the event, where Sebelius is being honored for her work in implementing the Affordable Care Act.

Graham writes that this isn’t the first time Ifill has crossed “the Obama line,” pointing to her 2008 book “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age Of Obama.” The book examined the role of race in modern American politics and at the time, supporters of Republican Sen. John McCain argued that the book proved that Ifill, who is black, was too biased in then-Sen. Barack Obama’s favor to moderate the sole vice presidential debate between then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin®. Ifill moderated the debate.

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