Fact checking, by the debate moderator, has become a hot topic of the current discourse on presidential campaigns.
A week before the first Clinton-Trump debate, Donald Trump said that debate moderator Lester Holt shouldn't try to fact-check the candidates. It should be up to the candidates, he said, to call out their rivals when they are wrong. On ABC's Sunday morning program This Week, Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said "I really don't appreciate campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers and that these debate moderators should somehow do their bidding," while Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that moderators have an obligation to fact-check Donald Trump in real time.
Former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, an adviser to Trump, twittered "How weak is Clinton that her campaign wants moderators to fact check Trump? Isn't that her job? Are they that afraid of Trump?" Another Trump spokesperson on MSNBC said that Holt shouldn't refute even the most outrageous of lies from Trump.
Vox wrote that Donald Trump lies all the time, while Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and a close confidant of Mr. Trump's, said, on Fox News' program Fox and Friends, that Hillary Clinton is "probably the biggest liar that ever ran for president of the United States."
AP reported: "Donald Trump's habit of peddling hype and fabrication emerged unabated in the first presidential debate while Hillary Clinton played it cautiously in her statements, though not without error. They both denied making statements that they are on the record as saying."
Politicians being loose with the facts, or sometimes even outright liars, is neither a new phenomenon, nor unique to American politics. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was elected by making outrageous and unsubstantiated promises. He not only failed to deliver, but also sunk the country into a much deeper hole than he found it in. The objective was not the truth and the betterment of the country, but becoming prime minister.
According to POLITICO, only Bloomberg TV confirmed that it would be doing on-screen fact checking during the presidential debates. Nearly all of the major cable or broadcast networks said that they would not use any sort of on screen fact check or graphics, because such checks would need to be nearly instantaneous to correlate with the answer the candidate is giving, and this would create some high editorial and technical hurdles.
Jim Lehrer, who has facilitated twelve presidential debates, said "The moderator's job is to keep the flow going," while it has been counter-argued that an actor or a robot could keep track of time - a journalist needs to represent the viewers and help make the truth known. Former debate panelist Ann Compton stated "we hate to leave absolute errors of fact on the table," while Chris Wallace, who will moderate the third and final presidential debate, has said that he won't fact-check aggressively because "it's not my job to be a truth squad."
In democracy, political debates are not contests of rhetoric, nor contests of artful deception. Deceptive speech is corruption of the democratic process. It is an attempt to steal votes by making false claims.
Democracy is based on a public discourse where arguments are scrutinized for validity. The purpose of political campaigns is for the people to learn who the candidates are, if they have a program, if the program is coherent, if it is feasible, and what its costs and befits are. Debates present one of the few opportunities where the people can form an informed opinion by watching such a public discourse.
Lehrer argued that the moderators' job "is to facilitate the revelation of this man and Hillary Clinton as well. Who are these people?" But how it can be determined who these people are without fact checking? Lehrer, also suggested that thorough fact-checking will appropriately take place right after the debate, and will "go on and on and on right up to Election Day."
According to CNN, 80.9 million Americans watched on television the first U.S. presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Fact checking after the debate is not equally effective as during the debate where the candidates are confronted directly on the validity of their claims. How many of the 80.9 million Americans who watched the first debate followed the fact checking after the debate was over? The direct confrontation of the candidates with the facts, when millions of people are watching, will also pressure them to be more responsible with their assertions.
It has been argued that the candidates should check each other. There would have been no issue if the candidates themselves were doing adequate fact checking. The reality is that for whatever reasons the candidates do not adequately fact check each other, and the purpose of the debate is defeated if the candidates are loose with the truth.
Janet Brown, executive director of the commission on presidential debates, which organizes the debates every four years, said that once the door of fact-checking by the moderator door is open, "I'm not sure, what the big fact is, and what is a little fact." But if we are concerned about the judgement of the moderator on "what is the big fact, and what is a little fact," why we are not concerned about his/her judgement on what are the big issues and what are little issues to be brought up for debate?
The formation of informed public opinion requires a scrutinized public discourse. In political debates, fact checking by the moderator, assisted in one way or another by a panel of fact checkers, is the closest approximation to such a discourse and should be an integral part of the debates.