Veteran reporter Tom Brokaw said in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC that he has not seen anybody who thinks former FBI Director James Comey was doing a good job.
Brokaw, who covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, suggested that much of the media response to Comey's Tuesday firing and Russia's possible connection to President Donald Trump's campaign team was "speculation."
"One of the things that I learned during Watergate ... is that we dealt with it every day on a factual basis. There was not a lot of speculation. Now, of course, the media landscape has changed a lot, and we have that going on 24/7," Brokaw said.
"I do think, however, that all of us as reporters ... have to take a deep breath and say let's deal with the facts as we know them at this point," he continued.
Brokaw emphasized that the firing of Comey was not, in his professional opinion, analogous to Watergate. But, he said, "there are a lot of elements here that desperately need more explanation, more investigation."
Brokaw also pointed out the turn of opinion on Comey following his firing by Trump.
"I haven't run into anybody yet who thinks that Jim Comey was doing a good job as the FBI director, beginning last summer," Brokaw said.
"And then as you'll remember, Hillary Clinton and others in the Democratic Party all but blamed him for her loss," Brokaw said. "Now they're defending him as the champion."
"So there's a lot of confusion going on here," he concluded. "Our obligation I think is to sort it out, truth from fact, and deal with the truth."