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The TV Pioneer and The Dirty Trick

Sally Swift's revealing Brushes with Greatness get around to her Mal Johnson story, on the occasion of the black broadcast pioneer's passing.

Sally worked under Mal -- a founder of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists -- while a student at Annenberg, and uses her space today to relate a Brush with History Itself that Mal related.

In it, we learn a very juicy version of really happened behind the scenes to make John F. Kennedy triumph over sweaty, shadowy Richard M. Nixon during that 1960 debate that boosted TV's distorting influence.

It has to do with a TV legend's dirty trick and allegiance to one candidate.  We're not supposed to have such things, let alone use them to sway elections.

Here's another account of Air Conditionergate, from Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV by Alan Schroeder