Pwnallthethings: folks gonna miss this from just the headline, but someone should point it out: the lack of live fact-checking by the moderators *was part of the agreement* by the campaigns. It's not just that CNN /didn't/ live fact check it. It's that they /weren't allowed to/.

folks gonna miss this from just the headline, but someone should point it out: the lack of live fact-checking by the moderators *was part of the agreement* by the campaigns. It's not just that CNN /didn't/ live fact check it. It's that they /weren't allowed to/.

Earlier this week, CNN's political director David Chalian said a debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise." Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that model Thursday night, despite multiple falsehoods claimed during the debate.

CNN debate moderators didn’t fact-check. Not everyone is happy about it.www.washingtonpost.com CNN’s political director said earlier a presidential debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise.” Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that.

I was aware but also Jesus what's the point of these then? Not to the media, to voters.

IDK, but that's a question better put to the campaigns than to CNN

Dear Joe Biden's campaign: no rly it's hard to fight a bullshitter on his terms. Do better, bro

Exactly. It's not like they didn't have any idea how Trump operates.

CNN was hosting the debate. They didn’t have to be a passive hostage to those rules. They chose to be party to them.

Plenty of other networks would have hosted the debate if CNN decided to refuse the campaigns' demands.

I think we’re on the same page that the moderators *sucked* - they could have at least followed up on some of the whack answers - or even framed the questions better from the get-go given that the knew fact-checking was verboten.

Then they would be liable to the same valid criticism cnn is taking now

If a single cable news outlet cared about their responsibilities instead of $ they could point out that the Trump campaign wanted a forum where Trump could just spit lies and no one could stop him

I think the whole idea is overblown. The moderators shouldn’t “fact check” and argue back with the candidates. It’s not an interview. It’s not their role and they wouldn’t do a good job of it anyway. They did mostly fine. People just want somebody other than Biden to blame for how poorly it went.

FWIW I think the debate format /in general/ is pretty weak, and frankly voters would be far better served by the candidates doing long-form interviews by (ideally quite aggressive) interviewers

Been a while since I paid attention there, but the UK used to be really, really good at those type of "hostile interviews"

We should invent a version of Prime Minister’s questions

Yeah, hard to do without a parliamentary system

If we had a parliamentary system, worries about age would not be so bad, right? If the PM becomes too old, either everyone covers for her, or someone else becomes PM without waiting for 4 years.

Hard to do with one. I dare you to watch Canadian question time and come out of it thinking it is a productive use of anyone's time.

McCain seriously proposed that and said he’d show up in Congress to do something like PMQs regularly. Doubt he would have stuck to it but wasn’t a terrible idea.

This is America. We can figure it out.

I've followed it in Germany recently. Vice chancellor, opposition leader, one interviewer, same table. 90 minutes straight policy.

The format we have by contrast is useless, it's not expected to reveal anything novel and is really set up to capitalize on style differences and highlight errors. No substance.

We should get rid of it.

US political debate is *stunningly* shallow by comparison to other countries. Tho other countries do get caught in ruts too, and Germany is pathologically bad at discussing anything to do with defense

I think both BBC and ITV did a series this time, though I haven't seen them. The BBC ones were apparently with Nick Robinson

Though this cycle, for whatever reason, they seem to have had a lot more "town hall" style formats where individual leaders have an extended Q&A session with a live audience one at a time.

It's one of the things the UK's relatively monolithic media does really well, is that since you really just /can't/ get elected without engaging with BBC, they can get away with being really very blunt (and occasionally devastating) with UK politicians in ways the US media ecosystem can't sustain

Like, Trump can easily get away with only really doing TV interviews with Sean Hannity, but Starmer/Sunak really couldn't get away with not taking interviews with the BBC

Indeed, and there's no real alternative TV media strategy - no private ad slots, no serious network that isn't bound by the same impartiality rules. You either deal with BBC, ITV, C4 and Sky, or you get no TV coverage. Which is why this is actually Farage shooting himself in the foot.

Nigel Farage to boycott BBC over ‘biased’ Question Time audiencewww.theguardian.com Reform also complains to Electoral Commission and Essex police about Channel 4 undercover investigation of party

When I moved over here, I was stunned by how aggressive interviewers are with politicians It’s MUCH better

I just said, in my QT of your previous skeet, that Jonathan Swan or Mehdi Hasan would be perfect for this.

It all eventually comes down to how aggressive and “locked in”, as the kids say, the interviewer / moderator is. Instead of honouring this tradition and use it as a marker of a healthy democracy, we’ve turned it into entertainment.

The difference is in the UK, politicians have to fight for access to BBC; in the US networks fight to host political debates. And that skews the incentives. It's not that the UK model is /better/--there's some stuff it's much worse at--but on this narrow thing the US model is weaker

Our royalty wouldn't stand for that kind of interview. We don't have politicians like the UK does.

I agree, it’s a much better model to hardball / provide the candidate time to explain and platform, but challenging on the realities. I see a value in debate, especially at this level of office, but agreed the format itself is weak.

Yeah it assumes both good faith and robust policy preferences as well as a constrained opportunity for the public to learn about those policies. None of that is in play! Skip them!

Right. At this point it feels very much like folks doing it out of a combination of "well it's tradition" and "good fodder for horse race coverage" rather than meaningfully informing the public. Tho, as Thursday shows, there's also opportunity for candidates to do themselves no favors.

God, I would love for someone to actually ask Trump in detail how he would have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine because he just says it over and over and nobody ever asks

Sure would be nice for someone to press Trump on his insistence that if he's elected, Putin will release Evan Gershkovich and end the war in Ukraine before Trump even takes office. Either he's completely made it all up or he has a secret deal with Putin, and both seem rather serious, but nobody asks

He'd just answer that he has a great plan that he will unveil in a couple of weeks.

Well seeing as Russia invaded Ukraine before he was president...

JONATHAN SWAN, this is your moment

This is why I wonder if we'd be better served by just letting the candidates ask each other questions.

Yeah - I think I’d accept even non hostile interviews, just maybe with the candidates answering the same set of questions.

It’s really “what would I want in a primary debate” because general election debates are pointless

This is why we don't have job debates.

If we really think about how we should choose presidents, it's much more like contracting out a job to a big firm. The CEO is an important consieration, but looking at the proposal that the firm is putting forward and their past record of work seems more important than how they perform in person.

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