When you are interviewing someone, you have a chance to follow up, to press, to dig in. In a debate there's 30 seconds for the other guy, too. And the goal is to get them to engage with each other, not to engage you necessarily.
Gwen IfillI knew early on that I wanted to be a reporter, but I didn't know I was a political journalist until my first job in Boston, in the '70s, covering the public school committee at a time when busing was a huge issue. Children's lives were being directly affected by political decisions, and that's when I realized that everything is politics.
Gwen IfillA lot of Democrats are not that upset with Howard Dean. Howard Dean gets out here and he says these inflammatory things, and he doesn't apologize. He doesn't back down a little bit.
Gwen IfillMy family was very engaged in the world around us. My father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and an immigrant from Panama. He was deeply involved in civil rights causes, which scared my mother - she was also an immigrant, from Barbados, who had her hands full with six kids, and she worried that my father would get deported. But because of his passion for politics and civil rights, we paid close attention to current events. We would watch political conventions together - for fun!
Gwen Ifill