{"id":11899,"date":"2016-09-26T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T04:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=11899"},"modified":"2024-12-05T14:21:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T19:21:28","slug":"fact-checking-is-the-medias-job-whether-its-during-a-debate-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2016\/09\/26\/fact-checking-is-the-medias-job-whether-its-during-a-debate-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact checking is the media’s job whether it’s during a debate or not"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It says a lot about the state of the U.S. election campaign that one of the most hotly debated topics is whether a debate moderator should call out obvious lies by either Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton when they face each other Monday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To someone who hasn’t been following the circus sideshow\/train wreck that is the Election 2016 campaign, this might seem like a bizarre thing to get hung up on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, isn’t checking facts what journalists are supposed to do\u2014even cable TV journalists? Isn’t that why we have journalists as debate moderators in the first place? As with many things involving Trump, it isn’t quite that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lester Holt, the NBC news anchor who is moderating the first debate Monday night, hasn’t said whether he plans to call out any untruths, but according to Politico, none of the major networks<\/a> have committed to doing real-time fact checking of the debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This was\u00a0originally published\u00a0at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The only TV provider who has committed to doing so<\/a> is Bloomberg TV\u2014which also means that fact checking will appear on Twitter’s live stream, since the service is broadcasting the channel’s coverage as part of<\/a> a partnership with Bloomberg Media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why wouldn’t news networks commit to doing this? Because many seem to believe, as bizarre as it may seem, that this isn’t what the presidential debates are for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Holt has been mum on the topic, Fox News host Chris Wallace, who will be moderating one of the upcoming debates, said recently<\/a> that he didn’t believe it was his job to be a “truth squad.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Matthews of MSNBC said that calling out Trump’s lies would be equivalent to<\/a> expressing an opinion, which journalists aren’t supposed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those comments came in the wake of NBC anchor Matt Lauer’s performance during recent back-to-back interviews with Trump and Clinton, in which he was widely criticized<\/a> for letting Trump get away with saying he opposed the Iraq War when there is ample evidence that he did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, the head of the debate commission said that moderators<\/a> shouldn’t get involved in checking the facts expressed by candidates. And Trump himself said Thursday that Holt should stay out of the debate and allow him and Hillary Clinton to “take each other on” over the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opponents of real-time fact-checking effectively agree with Trump, and believe that the candidates should be the ones to call each other out on their lies or misstatements of fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What prevents HRC herself from "fact-checking" Trump if necessary? Why whine for the moderators to intervene when she can just do it?<\/p>— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 26, 2016<\/a><\/blockquote>