Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz are set to debate this Tuesday. Ahead of the Oct. 1 event, the broadcaster announced that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will not fact-check either candidate — Walz and Vance will be responsible for fact-checking one another. The news prompted political scientist Norman Ornstein to lament that though CBS was once “the gold standard for television news,” both “those days and their standards are long gone.”
Ornstein isn’t the only voice objecting to CBS’ announcement, with the condemnation of their choice widespread on social media after CNN previously declined to fact-check candidates during the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump earlier this year, followed by ABC opting to include brief fact-checks from moderators in the presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
According to CBS News’ editorial standards, the moderators are there to facilitate the conversation/debate between the candidates, as well as enforce the debate’s rules. However, they leave the responsibility to the candidates when it comes to fact-checking as part of the broadcast. CBS does plan to offer its own form of live fact-checking — but it will be online, rather than directly from the moderators, via its CBS News Confirmed Unit journalists in an online blog.
Debates don’t have unlimited time. That would simply allow them to lie every time a person has the last say on a topic. Making the other person have to use their time to speak on the next topic about a previous topics bologna, making minimal time to actually reply and a constant distraction from answering the questions which were hopefully designed to allow voters to better understand the positions of the candidates.
Tally’s don’t really work well either because lies aren’t always black and white. Say for instance someone says x number of people or $x were spent on something or were effected by something. If they say 400,000 but it was really 389,000… You would have to mark that as a lie equivalent to a lie saying John Snow wasn’t a character in game of thrones.
This is the real answer.
CBS not fact checking gives the liar a strong advantage.
The moderators not fact checking is fine for things like debate competitions because the judges are experts.
But in a public debate, an opponent even responding to a lie legitimizes the lie. “Of course he’d say that.”
When a candidate lies and the facts are readily available to the moderators, it is imperative for the public good that they fact check.