So Tom Brokaw is fretting about criticism that NBC shows favoritism toward Obama.

On Sunday, I commented on how odd it was that Tom Brokaw ended a "Meet the Press" interview with Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod by saying -- seemingly out of nowhere -- that "in fairness to everybody here" he should tell us about a poll showing that, 53 to 42 percent, Americans think McCain is better suited to be commander in chief. That made me suspect that "Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism."

So I was very interested in this-behind-the-scenes report:

In an interview here after Sunday’s ["Meet the Press"] broadcast, Mr. Brokaw said that over the summer he had “advocated” within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates....

Mr. Brokaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate’s aides that — despite some negative on-air commentary by Mr. Olbermann in particular — Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates — until his name was invoked.

“One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, ‘If it’s an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won’t go,’ ” Mr. Brokaw said. “My name came up, and they said, ‘Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it’s going to be Brokaw.’ ”

I was right.

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This is good too -- Brokaw showing his exasperation with Schmidt and Axelrod:

“They didn’t come very prepared on the economy,” he said. “They’re both trying to give the impression they’re involved, but plainly they’re not.”

“I was interested in how the two of them stuck by their budget programs,” he said. “There was nothing that Obama has proposed that he’s willing to cut. McCain insisted he could balance a budget with spending cuts. Give me” — and here he paused for emphasis — “a break. Nobody believes that, in either case.”

Absolutely right.