CBS News Slammed For Saying Vance And Walz Will Have To Fact-Check Each Other at VP Debate

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 575 points – CBS News Slammed For Saying Vance And Walz Will Have To Fact-Check Each Other at VP Debate
thewrap.com

Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz are set to debate this Tuesday. Ahead of the Oct. 1 event, the broadcaster announced that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will not fact-check either candidate — Walz and Vance will be responsible for fact-checking one another. The news prompted political scientist Norman Ornstein to lament that though CBS was once “the gold standard for television news,” both “those days and their standards are long gone.”

Ornstein isn’t the only voice objecting to CBS’ announcement, with the condemnation of their choice widespread on social media after CNN previously declined to fact-check candidates during the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump earlier this year, followed by ABC opting to include brief fact-checks from moderators in the presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.

According to CBS News’ editorial standards, the moderators are there to facilitate the conversation/debate between the candidates, as well as enforce the debate’s rules. However, they leave the responsibility to the candidates when it comes to fact-checking as part of the broadcast. CBS does plan to offer its own form of live fact-checking — but it will be online, rather than directly from the moderators, via its CBS News Confirmed Unit journalists in an online blog.

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At this point, refusing to fact-check a debate is just a tacit admission that you want to help the GOP. After all, JD Vance is on record saying he has no problem lying and making up things if he thinks it's politically advantageous. Tim Walz shouldn't have to cut into his time correcting the lies of an established liar. Why have journalists involved at all? Seems like it'd be cheaper to hire some bozo off the street to read the questions and only enforce time limits on the Democrat. You don't need Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan to accomplish that.

Tim has come out guns blazing. I'd let him go head to head against Vance with no fact checks. I just wish they'd get rid of the moderators, though, if they aren't going to moderate.

Just put a jar between them and they can pull a card if the discussion dies down.

JD would just end up putting the jar between some couch cushions....

Vance would just act like it was a filibuster and rant about nonsense and yell lies for an hour not allowing Tim to be heard, and call it a "power move.". Idiots would think it showed he was strong, while ignoring the craziness of it all.

I feel like Walz will be able to call Vance on whatever bullshit he's peddling... but not having a neutral fact checker is a terrible idea.

And also Walz doesn't need to be wasting all of his allotted time fact checking an admitted liar. Not a ton of actual "News" in this article, but several of the referenced comments were funny/made good points like that.

Vance can spew out so much BS that Walz won't be able to make any points of his own.

That is Trump's tactic, which worked wonders when debating against Biden. I was glad when Harris shut that shit down by basically saying "I told you he was going to spout a bunch of bullshit, anyway my point is..."

The Gish Gallop seems to have become a common right wing tactic.

Flood the field with so much bullshit that the opponent can't address most of it the time available.

Time concerns aside, this will just make GOP say "they have their own idea of truth". Which is correct but the causality is vice versa.

Unless you are a partisan organization and want Trump to win.

Any attempt at fact checking will not be neutral. You can fact check obvious hyperbole, you can fact check because of slight misinterpretations, you can decide NOT to fact check. As soon as you decide to do it, you open the door for bias or accusations of bias.

Reality isn't neutral, facts are objective. If there's something that different stances on and both be personally correct then it's an opinion.

CBS does plan to offer its own form of live fact-checking — but it will be online, rather than directly from the moderators, via its CBS News Confirmed Unit journalists in an online blog.

So the attention of the viewer is divided or they don't even know that there is an online live fact check.

Sounds more than fishy

I vote for big true/false gauge behind them both. The needle swings as the speaker speaks. Maybe a flashing red light for insane lies and green for absolute truth.

But they would need real fact checkers voting on the truthfulness in real time to make it work.

This is actually a great compromise if they don't wanna fact check em on air. Have the meter and the link on screen if anyone wants to go online to read the fact check.

I’d prefer it actually visible to the candidates.

They need to know that we know.

Lul would be amazing. I would love to see their reaction as the meter in front of them goes ham.

So they're just going to let Vance fearmonger the country into a race war.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

He says she says. What a way to run a debate. Terrible idea!

This is a requirement of modern right-populist politics. They won't play defense, so they just say crap and you're always chasing the latest nonsense and never get to make a point.

Of course the counter to this is for Walz to make this a non-stop couch-fucking roast from minute one. I'm talking opening statement is about upholstery, fabric texture, visualize choices for lubricant and material combos. Just go all in on the furniture abuse right away.

"Hey, how was the tour of Ashely Furniture? Sorry I couldn't join you... Did you find any attractive couches?"

So sick of the over-use of "slam". Where it does work? "Car door slams finger." Elsewhere? No. Never.

What about after the words "Everybody get up, it's time to" or "come on and"?

Mysticpickle drops bombshell on journalists. Entire industry collapses!

Whatever happened to "criticize?'

That's been turned against the critic. Some people view "criticizism" the same as nitpicking and complaining.

Too boring! We need drama, baby! Endless, exhausting drama brings those sweet, sweet clicks! That's why we love Trump!

Easy blah blah obliterates/annihilates their opponent in alleged debate.

We might as well go for the most obscene words at this point.

Hook each VP candidate nuts to a car battery and every time they lie hit them with the full voltage.

Simple as.

too low voltage, recommend 10 batteries in series

StyroPyro has entered the chat

Was thinking of that exact video when writing this lol

That would increase voltage?

That's how batteries in series work.

Learned something new

It's why some devices have batteries in opposite directions. All they need is a piece of metal on one end, and a split on the other, and you went from 1.5 volts to 3. (1.5v for AA, AAA, C, D batteries)

Series increases voltage, parallel increases capacity. the more you know

12 volts is nothing. You can bridge a car battery with your fingers and nothing happens.

I’ve seen this Reddit post before.

It’s not a joke. Though you can feel free to keep making jokes, but seriously, think of a 9v battery and putting your tongue on it. A car battery is barely one more AA battery on top of that.

Have you seen the Reddit post where the guy attached the power supply to his freshly showered balls?

A power supply is not a car battery. Either it wasn’t a car battery or it was fake. Literally go try it yourself. I’m not joking. Car batteries you literally can’t even feel if you bridge the terminals. There’s plenty on YouTube if you don’t believe me and choose to believe some random Reddit vid.

A vanishingly small number of US voters are even going to watch this. There is wildcard baseball and a bunch of other crap happening at the exact same time.

Theres no point in watching it without fact checking and moderation, without those its just gonna be republican propaganda with occasional interjections by easily ignored sanity.

I will say this debate is inherently riskier than the last one simply because JD Vance is already at his floor. He's the most unpopular VP or VP candidate in history. Worse than Sarah Palin, worse than Spiro Agnew, worse than Aaron Burr.
He loses, nothing changes, he cannot go lower barring Mark Robinson tier revelations and even then I have doubts. He wins, Walz slips a point or two, Harris by extension maybe 1/4th of a point.

Really anything that can stop the bleed for the Republicans is a win for them, October is critical. Harris rode a 6 week high after getting in at the end of July, spent the first two weeks undoing the pit Biden had dug, then got boosts from the VP pick and convention that lasted until early September. Trump finally had trends on his side and the debate utterly wrecked that. That's finally fading again so they really are seeking a win, a screw up here could be too late to wait out and Vance getting some good press could bury stuff like the Uncle Robinson(no relation) disaster.

The other problem is that he's young, really young, Teddy young. JD Vance is young enough he can fake it for a little bit in a way Trump is just too old to do these days. He's baitable, but not to the level of Trump or even Biden in this environment. Young Narcissists can put on a face for a while in a controlled space like this, 80s Trump did it all the time and I'd argue Vance might be sharper than him.

I don't think it's a bad matchup, Walz is very wholesome and more experienced(and the reverse would be very unideal for the Democrats. Vance would be better at avoiding the massive tangents Harris baited Trump into, meanwhile Walz isn't as high energy or effective on the pursuit against Trump as Harris is) , but he definitely 'looks' and 'sounds' older than he is, especially compared to Harris. So Walz is walking in with that already there.

We're gonna have a proven liar on our network. We're not going to do anything to point that out.

Truth is just an opinion. Whatever was said most eloquently and with more confidence was probably truer. There needn't be any fact checking other than two people each saying a thing, the one who's right will simply sound right to anyone, regardless of any pre-existing bias. /S

vance cant fact check anyone being the admitted liar he is. just like his orange bff he cannot be trusted to be honest

I think this is how it should be. Moderators fact checking inevitably leads to accusations of being biased to one party, since anything and everything can be fact checked. Unless you keep tally and do an exact number of fact checks for both sides, it's futile to fact check. Let the opponent do that. They should have prepared for all the lies they know their opponents would peddle.

I'll try and assume that you're not just a Maga type who hates facts, for just a second.

You can't prepare for the lies that the opponent will peddle, because Vance uses the tactic where he just throws an avalanche of bullshit, with a tiny bit of truth in there. Its literally what he's been doing so far. No normal human being will be able to fact check all that in real time and give any rebuttal, waltz would look like he doesn't know what he's talking about even though in reality Vance would just be lying his ass off.

This is why you have moderators who do fact checking. If it seems to you that the fact checking is rather one sided, then you're very close to underi the issue, you just need that one last extra step where you understand that trump & co are full of bullshit

Debates don't have unlimited time. That would simply allow them to lie every time a person has the last say on a topic. Making the other person have to use their time to speak on the next topic about a previous topics bologna, making minimal time to actually reply and a constant distraction from answering the questions which were hopefully designed to allow voters to better understand the positions of the candidates.

Tally's don't really work well either because lies aren't always black and white. Say for instance someone says x number of people or $x were spent on something or were effected by something. If they say 400,000 but it was really 389,000... You would have to mark that as a lie equivalent to a lie saying John Snow wasn't a character in game of thrones.

This is the real answer.

CBS not fact checking gives the liar a strong advantage.

The moderators not fact checking is fine for things like debate competitions because the judges are experts.

But in a public debate, an opponent even responding to a lie legitimizes the lie. "Of course he'd say that."

When a candidate lies and the facts are readily available to the moderators, it is imperative for the public good that they fact check.