When the vice presidential nominees meet on Tuesday night to take part in a debate hosted by CBS News, moderators won’t be fact-checking in real-time — even if candidates promote blatantly false (and dangerous) lies.
The debate will feature Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and his Republican counterpart, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, who will pose questions to the candidates, coordinate who can speak when, and determine the length of rebuttals.
Notably, however, the vice presidential debate moderators will not fact-check candidates when their statements are false or inaccurate — a departure from the policy of past debates this election cycle. (During the presidential debate that was hosted by ABC News in September, for example, former President Donald Trump received numerous real-time fact-checks, including on his lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and his errant claims about abortion policy.)
If Vance peddles those same falsehoods during the CBS News debate on Tuesday, moderators won’t push back against his claims.
Viewers at home will instead see a QR code on their screen, which will direct them to a CBS News website where 20 journalists will be doing fact-checks live online. However, the code will not be available on other stations that simulcast the debate, meaning millions of viewers won’t have access to it unless they change stations midway through.
Executives for the network praised themselves for the “second-screen experience” innovation.
“The goal of the debate is to facilitate a good debate between the candidates, and the moderators will give them the opportunity to fact-check each other in real-time,” said Claudia Milne, senior vice president for standards and practices at CBS News.
The decision not to fact-check during the debate is particularly alarming given Vance’s propensity for telling outright lies. In addition to pushing racist lies about Haitian immigrants in his home state — which he has admitted to “creating” in order to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment to help him and Trump politically — Vance has promoted a number of false conspiracy theories, including wrongly alleging that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Trump, and bogusly claiming that there is a federal government plot to kill rural conservative voters using fentanyl.
The rules for the CBS News debate would leave Walz the sole person in charge of disputing such lies on air. Critics, including former employees of CBS News, blasted the network for not taking the same precautions that ABC News took to debunk lies and conspiracy theories.
“I spent 30 years as an election analyst for CBS. It was the gold standard for television news. Those days, and their standards, are long gone,” said political scientist Norman Ornstein.
“A free press is ‘the fourth estate’ for a reason — to hold those in power accountable. If media fails (or refuses) to hold Govt accountable, then it fails to be a free press & instead becomes state run propaganda,” human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid pointed out on X.
“CBS News declining to fact check the veep debate should lead us to conclude that Trump/MAGA bullying of the media is working,” said Greg Sargent of The New Republic. Only one side is threatening media for telling the truth.”
Vice presidential debates aren’t normally considered critical events during election season — they are typically viewed by smaller audiences than presidential debates, and statistical evidence shows that they rarely move the needle in polling.
But this vice presidential debate may be an anomaly, as this isn’t a typical election year. The closeness of the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris means that any impact, even a small one, could help either of the presidential tickets to win the election a month from now. This debate may also hold more significance to voters because there has only been one debate between Harris and Trump so far — usually, there are about three debates between presidential candidates leading up to the election.
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