Former Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Fulwood III unloaded on conservative criticism of Gwen Ifill’s conflict of interest on the Washington Post-owned website The Root on Thursday with an article titled "Distort, Distract, Demagogue." Any conservative who questioned whether Ifill would be a fair moderator when she’s writing a book chronicling the "age of Obama" is not only a demagogue, but a sycophant:

If nothing else, the sycophants genuflecting to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign are experts at creating diversions.

When things go bad, they call out the troops to fill the airwaves with misdirection. Or they heave Hail Mary passes, hoping to connect with their easy-to-anger supporters. In fact, they'll do just about anything except admit to the campaign's shortcomings. So now, they've dragged PBS anchor Gwen Ifill into the crosshairs of their phony efforts at sowing confusion and distraction.

On the eve of tonight's vice presidential debate, a bevy of right wingers mounted a smear campaign against Ifill. Michelle Malkin kicked it off with a poisoned-pen commentary in the National Review Online, claiming Ifill is unfit to moderate the debate because she's writing a book about Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

But this shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Washington-based journalists write books all the time, and Ifill's book was no secret. Random House plans to publish Ifill's book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," about the time the next president is inaugurated.

Fulwood, described by the site as only a "Cleveland-based journalist," didn’t really explain that he and Ifill are friends and liberal-media colleagues, and he has told of their joint puzzlement as they interviewed Maxine Waters and Waters failed to share their outrage over President Clinton condemning the vile let’s-kill-whites remark of rapper Sister Souljah in 1992. He would brook no dissent from the notion that Ifill is head and shoulders above the grubby average of media honesty and fair-mindedness:

Although I've known and admired Ifill for nearly 20 years, it is fair to say that anyone who has watched her career would agree that she's one of the most honest and straight-shooting people in this sometimes dishonest and deceitful business. No one expects her to be anything but tough and fair-minded, which is why she was selected to be the moderator in the first place.

But Ifill's fairness isn't a real issue. No, the fact of the matter is that the right- wing echo chamber is scared to death that Palin will make a fool of herself before a national audience. So they toss out the smoke bombs and scream like bloody fools.

Such distracting haze and noise has a single purpose. The conservative squawkers want to kill the messenger to divert attention away from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is McCain's running mate.

Fulwood is foolish to insist that "anyone who has watched her career" would be pressed to agree that she's the dictionary definition of fair and balanced. She is not. She failed to be fair in the 2004 vice presidential debate, and anyone who watched that event ought to concede the point.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.