A lesson for CBS: Live fact-checking is incompatible with good debate moderation

Lindsey Davis and David Muir of ABC News moderated ABC's Sept. 10 presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The debate, the second of the year, demonstrates the collapse of the traditional Commission on Presidential Debate forums that came into being in 1987. The commission originally planned to host a series of debates this fall that neither of the political parties would agree to for their campaigns. 

The collapse of that process led to the current regimen of media network debate events now hosted by CNN and ABC. Most analysts recognize that Muir and Davis engaged in arguably partisan fact checking against the Trump campaign, raising inherent questions about how the next debate among vice presidential candidates Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) might be moderated by CBS News journalists Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.  

In the CNN debate and the recent ABC debate, some positive progress toward better debate moderation was made. Chris Wallace in 2020 consumed 25 percent of the debate time with his own arguments. Moderator Steve Scully was disciplined prior to his debate for plotting to engage in attacks against candidate Trump.

The idea of journalist moderators “intervening” and “fact checking” candidates originates with the activism pursued by Candy Crowley in her debate moderation of Republican candidate Mitt Romney and President Obama in 2012. The first debate between Romney and Obama led to public polling suggesting Obama lost rather decisively. Believing that the result was tainted by a lack of “fact checking,” Crowley promised she would fact check the debate live, despite assurances that such measures were not allowed by moderators.

A similar dynamic was observed in the period between the June 27 debate and the Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC. The June 27 debate featured less fact checking by CNN. President Biden suffered a decisive loss in that debate, leading to his withdrawal from the election. Lindsay Davis made clear after the Sept. 10 debate that she believes the CNN moderators failed to fact check, and that her own fact checking was a positive good. She and Muir fact-checked Trump five times without ever fact checking Harris, even though Harris made a number of provocative factual statements arguably worthy of fact-checking.

For example, Harris said that “Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” This statement came made on the eve of the anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks, arguably the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

She also said: “And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.” However, there were (and still are) thousands of U.S. active duty military personnel serving in combat zones in Syria and Iraq, some of whom had been taking fire just about a month before the debate. 

This demonstrates that live fact-checking is incompatible with the true purposes of political debate. In political debate and speech, candidates make inherently contentious claims that are not easily verifiable, such as “best economy” and “worst war.”

In true debates, there are always fact checkers — namely, the opposing debater and the voters themselves. Biden and Trump had equal opportunities to fact check one another. When the journalist moderators refuse their ethical commitment to be unbiased, they depart from the non-partisan role of journalists.

Moreover, in the advent of televised presidential debates in 1960, Congress changed election campaign laws to allow the debates between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. The key legal obstacle was the enshrined belief that broadcast companies should not abuse their power to unfairly influence presidential elections. The conduct of Muir and Davis is inconsistent with the general ethic of academic debates as practiced by high school and college students around the world. No debater expects the judge or time keeper to interrupt the debate and make pronouncements about how certain statements are misleading or false.

All of these problems point to an ethical concern that is well placed: Television broadcast companies and their employees should not unreasonably interfere with political election campaigns. This has been a concern since the inception of televised debates. 

Much like CNN, CBS now faces a dilemma about how to conduct the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1. Ideally, moderators would say almost nothing and candidates would have more time to make opening arguments that might outline a specific policy that many voters still want to hear.

Live fact checking by CBS journalists would add to the already dismal view the public holds about journalists reporting on politics in America. Surveys of journalists show a growing desire to affiliate openly with the Democratic Party (28 percent in 2013 to 36 percent in 2022) and a declining desire to affiliate with the Republican Party (7.1 percent in 2013 to 3.4 percent in 2022).

The public remains clear that they want more fair political debate in the United States. The high viewership numbers show a civic appetite for fair debate. Journalists need to observe their important ethical role in performing as a free press, rather than an ideologically captive one.

Failure to rise to that ethical demand is not only problematic in terms of having an informed electorate, but may also rise to a legal violation of our campaign laws designed to protect the public from abuse of their broadcast powers. Election law presently states that every political debate “must include at least two candidates and must be structured so that it does not promote or advance one candidate over another.” 

ABC’s conduct of the Sept. 10 debate arguably failed that legal standard. CBS has a legal, ethical and civic obligation to raise the conduct of their moderators for the vice presidential debate of Oct. 1.

Ben Voth, PhD, is a professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is author of six academic books on rhetoric and argument including “James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debaters” (Lexington, 2017) and “Debate as Global Pedagogy:  Rwanda Rising” (Lexington, 2021) detailing how public arguments positively change public policies.