Lehrer On Obama Campaign Debate Criticism: 'Spin Doesn't Work If Everybody's Seen The Event'

Sean Hannity, Fox News: “I felt that for you, after the debate, a lot of criticism heaped on you.”

Jim Lehrer, PBS News Hour: “Yeah”

Hannity: “How did you feel about that?”
Lehrer: “Well, you know, I’m not really keen on criticism [laughs], just as a general thing. But, that was right at the beginning. The criticism has pretty much gone away now because people realize that spin doesn’t work if everybody’s seen the event. Sixty-seven million people watched it, sixty-seven million other people reacted to it — saw excerpts [of] it and all of that. So, they know what they saw. So, everybody is pretty well chilled out on this, and nobody’s blaming me for it and blaming me for anything. And the format is what made it possible. Whatever happened, some people look at it in a positive way, some people look at it in a negative way. However, the fact of the matter is it was the format and all I did was implement the format — which was a wide-open opportunity for the candidates to directly address each other.”