Here’s a line included in a statement put out by the Commission on Presidential Debates last week that should concern a lot of voters: “While the focus [of the debates] will properly be on the candidates, the moderator will regulate the conversation so that thoughtful and substantive exchanges occur.”
That sounds innocuous, and it would be if not for the fact that the national media (members of which will be moderating the debates) have proven themselves utterly incapable of regulating anything, let alone “thoughtful and substantive” conversation.
Chris Wallace of Fox News is set to moderate the first debate at the end of this month, and he was the one who in July insisted (falsely!) in an interview with President Trump that Joe Biden had not committed to divesting in police departments. For today’s media, that’s called a “fact check” simply because it’s in line with what the rest of the media push as true, even when it’s demonstrably untrue.
Even worse than that are supposed “fact checks” over clear matters of opinion or facts that are, at the very least, in dispute.
Trump is well within his rights to call Biden a socialist because he believes the former vice president’s policies have socialist qualities. And yet CNN routinely describes that accusation as “false.”
Are Wallace and the moderators of the subsequent two debates at liberty to “regulate the conversation” by jumping in to declare matters of opinion false? Are they at liberty to “regulate the conversation” by halting a line of attack to deliver one of their searing “fact checks,” which, as we’ve seen time and time again, are unreliable?
There may have been a time that moderators, in addition to keeping time and directing the back-and-forth, could be trusted to “regulate the conversation so that thoughtful and substantive exchanges occur,” but that time is gone. Now, they should be viewed with harsh skepticism that they can do the job without turning the events into absolute disaster.
