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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
An article
about why the debate moderators are so unwilling to fact check the candidates.
But on the eve of the first debate, the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Janet Brown, crushed those daydreams into finely ground dust.
"I don't think it's a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica," she told CNN. In her view, it’s the candidates’ job to fact-check each other — not the moderator’s job to fact check them.
To Hillary Clinton and her supporters, this might seem like a betrayal. What it really is, though, is tradition.
...
Just look to Fox News’s Chris Wallace, who’s moderating the third and last debate and has already said as much: "I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad," he told Howard Kurtz in an interview earlier this month.
This isn’t a matter of a Fox News host giving favorable treatment to a Republican candidate; it’s a matter of a Commission-selected moderator giving the Commission’s line. Longtime debate moderators, including PBS’s Jim Lehrer (who’s moderated more debates than any other journalist), don’t feel moderator fact-checks are appropriate either.
At a glance, this probably seems naive at best and bonkers at worst. If the moderators aren’t supposed to call out candidates when they lie, what’s the point of having them there at all? The answer, though, is that the moderators really don’t think they ought to be there at all.
Since the very first televised presidential debate of 1960, moderators have been trying — and failing — to recreate the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858: two candidates on a stage, talking about their competing visions of America to the voters, may the best orator win.
It’s always been a romantic ideal. But it’s been a tradition for decades of debating. And when it comes to the hidebound world of presidential debates, the combination of "idealized discourse" and "revered tradition" is basically enough to guarantee that moderators will treat this election — and these candidates — just like any other.
A very brief history of debate moderators trying to make themselves disappear If the media had had its way, the very first (and most famous) televised presidential debate wouldn’t have had moderators at all.
In 1960, the campaigns of Richard Nixon and John Kennedy came to an agreement with the major TV networks (at the time, CBS, NBC, and ABC) to debate each other on live TV. As Jill Lepore writes in a recent New Yorker feature, the biggest sticking point in negotiations wasn’t between Nixon and Kennedy but between the campaigns and the networks: "The networks wanted Nixon and Kennedy to question each other; both men insisted on taking questions from a panel of reporters."
...
Televised presidential debates didn’t happen again until 1976. Every four years since then, what happens in fall is called a "debate." Every four years since then, it involves moderators. And every four years since then — or so it seems — the moderators try, and fail, to make themselves invisible and facilitate a conversation between the candidates.
...
As far as the moderators are concerned, fact-checking should absolutely happen — but it should be the candidates’ job to fact-check each other. During a discussion at the University of Notre Dame in September, Lehrer of PBS explained that if Trump lied about his opposition to the Iraq War during a debate, "all any moderator would have done is said, 'Senator Clinton?' And then she would have called him a liar. The moderator would never have to intrude."
Lehrer has long been a proponent of these exchanges, which in the past (back when major party nominees were all one gender) he called "man to man." But usually the candidates just don’t bite.
In 2008, when Barack Obama made a reference to John Mc Cain, Lehrer interrupted: "Say it directly to him." Both candidates balked: "Are you afraid I couldn’t hear him?" Mc Cain joked, and Obama simply skipped to the next phrase of his answer to avoid the situation entirely.
"I'm just determined to get you all to talk to each other," Lehrer said, exasperated. It’s been the motto of campaign moderators for the past 40 years.
According to the president of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which sets the rules for who qualifies for debates and how debates are formatted, often long before the candidates are even chosen, one of the criteria for selecting journalists to moderate the debates is this: "They need to understand for better or worse that their names are not on the ballot."
It’s a strong warning against moderators "intruding" (as experienced debate moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS put it at the Notre Dame event). But it’s also an illustration of how the commission sees itself and the debates: a unique opportunity to shut out the noise of the outside world and let the people whose names are on the ballot present their visions to America.
The ideal of debate that always gets brought up in these contexts is the Lincoln/Douglas debates, which weren’t presidential debates at all, since the candidates were running against each other for Senate at the time. (This meant they were campaigning on behalf of the state legislature candidates who’d elect a senator.)
Those debates were barely debates: One candidate would give a speech, then the other, then the first would give another speech. And they might have been forgotten to history entirely if Lincoln hadn’t then collected the texts into a book, bringing national attention to his oratory and helping him win the Republican nomination for president in 1860.
But it’s an attractive ideal, isn’t it? Two candidates, arguing their visions for America before a crowd, with no need for an external authority to keep them on message and civil. It’s nice to believe that’s the way democracy works.
In fact, it might even be particularly appealing during this cycle. The public complains that they don’t hear enough about the candidates’ policy proposals; what better way to fix that than to have the candidates discuss those plans with America themselves, rather than forcing them to talk about stupid horse race controversies? Matt Lauer got attacked for asking Hillary Clinton tough questions and Donald Trump softballs. If Clinton herself were responsible for pressuring Trump, wouldn’t that problem solve itself?
To see the problem with this logic, you have to see the difference between Clinton and Trump not just as a difference of shared values but as an absence of shared facts.
If the point of a presidential debate is to move the discussion between candidates beyond "he said/she said," that’s kind of the opposite of forcing the candidates to be responsible for correcting each other’s falsehoods. But as long as the presidential debates are ruled by the traditionalists, candidates will be expected to do both.
I wonder if Lester will ask him about that whole "somebody shoot my opponent" thing. But I doubt it. Trump's deplorables always cry foul whenever the media asks him to explain the horrible things he voluntarily says to the media. And people crying foul at your network is not good for ratings.
edited 26th Sep '16 5:20:06 PM by Lennik
That's right, boys. Mondo cool.So, what networks will you guys be watching the debates on?
I've got CNN on, myself.
Oh God! Natural light!Bloomberg will be performing live fact checking
.
I'm not sure whether they can keep up in the event Trump tries a Gish Gallop.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotWatching it with the 'rents. We've got wings and beer so worst come worst we can drink our way into chickeny oblivion.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?If you don't have cable or internet, someone over Youtube or Twitch probably has a livestream. Hopefully you can find one without someone talking over it.
Me, personally, I'm gonna be playing WoW while it's going on while keeping up with y'all for the highlights.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Debating between beer and hot mulled cider/wine (1/2 and 1/2 sweet apple cider and white wine with mulled cider spice to taste)
edited 26th Sep '16 5:57:37 PM by Elle
I just have water. Fortunately, the toilet's just a few feet away.
Anyway, here's Lester Holt.
Oh God! Natural light!

More than once
Oh really when?