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The vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance is tonight, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, network host CBS News has announced that moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell will not be fact-checking the candidates.
Instead, the network says, it will be up to the candidates to fact-check each other, and the moderators will “facilitate those opportunities” during candidate rebuttals.
And thus, being a CBS News vice presidential debate moderator seems like a pretty sweet gig.
You just sit there, read some debate rules you don't really have to enforce, ask a few questions that were approved by network execs, do absolutely no fact-checking (journalism), and get a paycheck.
Sweet.
In other words, instead of focusing on an informative policy discussion and laying out the Vice President’s vision for the country, Gov. Walz will be expected to do both that AND being the only person holding accountable Mr. Vance’s constant lying on national television.
Mr. Vance, as you’ll recall, has made relentless disinformation his primary strategy as Trump’s running mate.
Most notably, he’s pushed the repeatedly debunked and deeply racist claim that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating household pets, refusing to back down even when confronted with the fact that there is zero evidence to support this anti-immigrant propaganda.
In fact, a quick short story on that:
Anna Kilgore, a resident of Springfield, Ohio, filed a police report in late August that her cat, Miss Sassy, had gone missing. She suspected her Haitian neighbors had taken the cat.
The Trump campaign used the police report as the strongest evidence for their unfounded, racist claim about Haitian migrants.
A spokesperson for J.D. Vance provided the police report to The Wall Street Journal.
Two weeks ago, WSJ spoke with Ms. Kilgore, who admitted her cat had returned a few days later, found safe in her basement. Ms. Kilgore, a Trump supporter, said she had apologized to her Haitian neighbors.
Lovely.
Let's be clear about something: the only reason that CBS News is declining to fact check the vice presidential debate is because they're terrified of Trump and his supporters retaliating for being held accountable on the candidate and his running mate’s relentless lying and disinformation.
For a prepared moderator, fact-checking a debate should be easy. It really should. It's not complicated. If the candidate says something demonstrably wrong, you correct the record. Either the moderator is unprepared or the network is cowardly.
CBS News has no excuses.
But after ABC News fact-checked Trump in real time during the Sept. 10th presidential debate, the Trump campaigned whined about him being treated, like, you know, an adult who’s running for president. The Nepo-Baby-in-Chief and his supporters cried over being held accountable, and in response, CBS News got cold feet.
I wanna be clear that I do have high respect for tonight’s moderators, Ms. Brennan and Ms. O’Donnell. I think they’re both good journalists who challenge nonsense far more than most of their colleagues in broadcast news.
This isn’t about them. This is about their network. In a moment of great peril for American democracy, CBS News decided the worst sin that could be committed isn’t failing to inform the public—you know, journalism—but offending Donald Trump and his acolytes by ensuring the public is informed.
I’ll be watching (and live-tweeting) tonight’s debate, of course, and I sincerely hope that Ms. Brennan and Ms. O’Donnell—the latter of whom will soon end her tenure as anchor of CBS Evening News—decline to remain passive in the face of deeply harmful propaganda.
The American people are owed that.
Otherwise, what’s the point in having journalists?
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