“AN IMPOSSIBLE POSITION”
Schroeder, who authored a book on presidential debates, said misstatements on the debate stage used to generate mountains of humiliating news coverage.
A gaffe about the Soviet Union’s presence in Eastern Europe became a defining moment of Gerald Ford’s 1976 election defeat, for example.
But Trump’s repeated lies have shifted the goalposts.
“In debates, this means dumping so many falsehoods into the dialogue that it becomes impossible to provide real-time corrections or context,” Schroeder said.
Trying to insert fact-checks into the conversation without appearing biased puts moderators “in an impossible position”, he told AFP.
“Any amount of time spent refuting or clarifying erroneous claims during a debate is time not spent discussing more substantive matters.”
Dartmouth College’s Brendan Nyhan, who studies political misperceptions, said live fact-checking requires difficult judgments about what to correct and what to let go.
“Live fact-checking is a high-wire act,” he told AFP.
ABC News, which is hosting Tuesday’s debate, did not respond to requests for comment on whether its moderators will challenge Trump and Harris to back up their claims.
During the June debate, ABC featured debunks from PolitiFact on its live blog.
New York Times fact-checker Linda Qiu conceded that whenever candidates square off, fact-checkers are “always going to be minutes behind the action”.
Her team also spends weeks gathering research and sifting through candidate talking points to prepare for their liveblog, she told AFP.
Yet experts and fact-checkers agree it is worthwhile to provide an accounting of what is and is not accurate, despite the delay.
“It’s our public service as journalists to inform the public of the truth behind the rhetoric,” Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s lead fact-checker, told AFP.
Still, a sad reality pervades: “Every presidential candidate lies,” Kessler said.
Source: CNA
