Leading up to Monday’s debate, Hillary Clinton, her surrogates, and no shortage of media figures, demanded that Trump be fact checked during the debate. And they wanted Trump fact checked in real time—even if it meant moderator Lester Holt interrupt him.
As it turns out, Holt didn’t directly challenge Trump. Clinton at one point broke the fourth wall to ask say “please, fact checkers, get to work” and at other times urge viewers to go to her website where Trump would (obviously not impartially) be fact checked.
Trump obviously had his moments where he stretched the truth (to say nothing of his general confusion at times). This is what we’ve come to expect from Trump. What was surprising—or unsurprising, given Clinton’s own storied reputation for dishonesty—is that Clinton stumbled into so many embarrassing misrepresentations of the facts after claiming the high ground, and that Trump would be the one calling her out.
The first Associated Press fact check of the night went against her for entirely disingenuous claim that she didn’t brazenly flip-flop on supporting the Trans Pacific Partnership:
A second notable moment came when discussing crime. Trump was extolling the virtue of the “stop and frisk” policy of the NYPD. In discussing the subject, Trump was right and wrong about his claim the policy was ruled unconstitutional (it’s complicated) and probably shouldn’t have challenged Holt on the issue. So Trump is not covered in glory here. But there was one basic issue that came up relating to the rise of violent crime.
The number of murders in New York city is a pretty easy thing to check. According to the New York Times earlier this year, “New York had 352 murders last year, and about 333 in 2014.” On this narrow point, Trump is absolutely correct and Clinton was wrong. End of story.
After the debate Fox News correctly pointed out that Trump scored a debating point here. But not everyone in the media handled this well. At NPR, one of a few outlets ran that purported to fact check the debate in real time, here’s what their Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson said about this exchange:
This is not complicated. On the issue of whether murders went up under New York’s current mayor—and the city’s first Democratic mayor in almost two decades—murders have gone up the last two years in a row and are projected to go up a third year.
So why can’t the fact checker here simply state the obvious, that Trump was correct and Hillary was wrong? I don’t envy anyone who has to fact check a presidential debate in real time, but to the extent that it presents challenges are an argument for waiting to do some research and reflect on how the candidates should be fact checked. (I’m not necessarily suggesting NPR’s fact checkers are biased here, though certainly that’s a huge problem with other fact checkers.)
But the bottom line is this: Lots of people, including Hillary Clinton demanded Trump be fact checked at the debate. What we learned from this debate is that Clinton should be fact checked as much as Trump, and given the challenges presented by real time fact checking, there’s no reason to trust that the media will do a competent or fair job of it.
