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They said it
couldn’t be done. For years, we’ve heard all the reasons – excuses,
really – that presidential debates cannot and should not be fact-checked
in real time.
Countering lies is
not the job of the moderators, we were told; it is strictly the role of
the candidates themselves. Fact-checking would take up too much time and
interrupt the flow of the debate, we were told. And what about
impartiality? How could moderators be expected to decide whom to
challenge with fact checks?
Fact-checking,
we were told, was impractical and inappropriate, and simply a very, very
bad idea. Yes, even in the age of Donald Trump,
who wakes up each day and immediately begins lying about his dreams.
But then came
Tuesday night’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris –
and that memorable moment when the moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News
piped up with just a few words after Trump went into one of his
evidence-free rants about babies being executed.
“There is no state
in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Davis
said in an even tone. It didn’t take a lot of time, it did correct an
oft-repeated lie and it did establish something important: the most
egregious falsehoods might well be challenged by these moderators. The
candidates were put on notice.
Davis wasn’t alone
in this. Her co-moderator, David Muir – in much the same neutral, polite
tone and with much the same admirable brevity – did the same. After Trump
made a wild claim about migrants in Ohio eating
pets, Muir calmly stated that ABC had pre-checked this one and
determined that it wasn’t true. And in another instance, Muir countered
Trump’s charges of uncontrolled and rising crime, especially involving
migrants, with this: “As you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is
coming down in this country.”
It was noticed.
And largely, though not universally, praised. The moderators also did a
good job of returning to questions that had not been answered, and in
some cases, pressing for a clear yes or no.
Trump’s allies
were outraged, naturally, that he wasn’t allowed to fib at will. How
terribly unfair, they charged. Why weren’t there equal numbers of fact
checks and challenges for Harris, they demanded, never stopping to
acknowledge that she had mostly stuck to that crazy little thing called
the truth. (A lengthy New York Times listing of questionable
statements by both candidates, published after the debate,
identified a couple of times that Harris has strayed from reality or
misled; but, as expected, there was really no comparison with Trump’s
litany of lies.)
Trump later posted
on social media calling the moderator “hacks”. The debate, he charged,
was “THREE ON ONE!”
But, as CNN’s Abby
Phillip drily observed: “When there is asymmetrical lying, there will be
asymmetrical fact-checking.”
The post-debate
media coverage, in general, was up to its usual tricks of giving Trump
the benefit of the doubt. Overall, it too often failed to convey with
clarity what had happened in a debate dominated by the cool strength of
Harris and the angry, incomprehensible ravings of Trump. Headlines tended
to lapse into neutralizing, conventional language like this one in the
Washington Post: “Harris crisply attacks Trump, prompting retorts with
fiery language.”
NPR, to its
credit, noted: “The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and
general lack of any serious grasp on policy.”
And even over on
Fox News, there were some abnormal glimmers of reality, as when Brit Hume
allowed that Trump had “had a bad night”.
No doubt, the
debate was a win for Harris.
And, with the help
of ABC’s moderators, a better-than-usual night for the truth.
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