Debate moderators get advice on how to avoid clashing with Trump and becoming the story

[DonViejo]

By James Hohmann September 15 at 9:29 AM

THE BIG IDEA: Matt Lauer got panned last week for not challenging Donald Trump after the GOP nominee falsely claimed he always opposed the Iraq war during a forum on NBC. But Jim Lehrer thinks the format of the upcoming debates will allow the moderators to avoid playing the role of fact checker.

“People sitting out there want the moderator to yell ‘liar!’ It ain’t gonna happen,” said Lehrer, who moderated 12 presidential debates from 1988 to 2012 and has since retired from PBS. “If Matt Lauer had both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sitting there together in a debate situation, and he asked that question and Trump gave that answer, all he would have had to do is say, ‘Secretary Clinton?’ … And then she would have called him a liar. The moderator would never have ever had to intrude.”

Lehrer and Bob Schieffer, another experienced moderator, spoke during a panel discussion at the University of Notre Dame last night about how to strike the right balance between fact checking a candidate and staying out the way. They both received much better reviews in 2012 than former CNN anchor Candy Crowley, whose squabble with Mitt Romney about Benghazi became the major story out of the debate.

“The role of the moderator is to be the referee. It’s not to be the judge,” said Schieffer, who is now retired from CBS. “It is the responsibility of the moderator to make sure the truth gets out, but the chief fact checkers should be the candidates themselves. If candidate A says something, you should give candidate B the opportunity to correct them. … People want to know if the other guy knows the answer. … If he doesn’t correct it, that becomes part of the knowledge of what they think of the candidates. … If he doesn’t pick up on it, then you call the guy on it.”

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/09/15/daily-202-debate-moderators-get-advice-on-how-to-avoid-clashing-with-trump-and-becoming-the-story/57da51b5cd249a37b9882e1d/?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

[SHRED]

1. Yeah but Lauer DIDN'T have her there

And it wasn't a debate.

He lost me right there.

[Justice]

2. Sounds like excuses to me.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Yes but even referees need to call out cheats.

Either way, I'm pretty sure there will be
plenty of fact checking going on in the
post analysis.

[justiceischeap]

8. You're exactly right, a referee can throw a flag on the play, pull a card for penalty, etc.

But a moderator, really, isn't a referee. I would appreciate if moderators were actually more like referee's but they aren't.

Sadly, by the time the debate is over, I'd posit that most American's have learned what they need to know. What I'd like to see is real-time fact checking as the debate takes place with a "truthiness" meter at the bottom of the screen for each candidate. This gives real-time analysis for the people tuning in to see along with how their preferred candidate performs. Of course, it'd never happen because candidates would never agree to something so fair or beneficial to the American people.

[Jamaal510]

15. I think even

if there was a truthiness meter during the debates, there will still be plenty of die-hards who will claim that the meter is rigged. It's a good idea, though.

[still_one]

4. I wouldn't expect anything less from the medium that told us there were WMDs in Iraq,

that the SC ruled down the ACA as unConstitutional before reading the full ruling, that Gabby Giffords was killed, and so many other misstatements and outright falsehoods.

Accuracy is no longer important

[unblock]

5. they asked gary johnson, without context, about aleppo, then said "you're kidding?"

when johnson said he didn't know what aleppo was.


that's ok when you're interviewing a third-party candidate, but they wouldn't dream of doing that to trump.

and of course you know they have their ways to beat up on hillary.

"doesn't that play into peoples' perception of you as untrustworthy?"


but trump would say he's 10 feet tall and they'd never call him out on it.

[Jerry442]

6. Debates can be useful, I suppose, if your goal is...

...to see whether the candidates can get through stressful moments without wetting themselves. If you want to see a thoughtful discussion of the relative merits of the candidates' policies and governing philosophies, you'll probably be disappointed.

[cheyanne]

7. but when a debater constantly lies . . .this won't work

Clinton will spend her time fact checking Trump and not getting her own ideas out there.

A better way is to have the questions given to the candidates before hand. The questions are the same for each and should cover major issuess.

Example:

Abortion
How does your plan differ from your opponent?

How will you balance your budget?

What civil rights areas are you interested in protecting?


The candidates could chose to attack the other's plans or explain their own.

[renate]

10. at first I thought Lehrer was right, but of course you are

It shouldn't be Clinton's job to keep Trump in check. Maybe the best she can do is have a team live-tweeting the actual facts during the debate so she can talk about her own positions without wasting her rebuttal time.

These are extraordinary circumstances. Everybody goes over their time limits during debates but Trump will never shut up if they don't absolutely force him to. They should just have a hard-and-fast rule of switching off the microphone when someone goes on more than 15 seconds past their time limit. That wouldn't help with the lying, of course.

[cheyanne]

14. Real debates have time limits.

Each candidate speaks and rebuts for the same amount of time: candidate 1 speaks, candidate 2 speaks, candidate 1 rebuts, candidate 2 rebuts.

These tv "debates" are not using true debate rules, so it's just a mess.

[Imperialism Inc.]

9. From a purely practical perspective we should actually encourage this attitude from the moderators.

Right or wrong , if the moderators correct Trump every few minutes the Trump campaign will be able to successfully challenge the result of the debate. This could turn a Hillary win into a tie or a loss in the public's eyes. It's best, for us, if they leave the fact checking to Hillary.

[oasis]

11. Keep Trump in check and get those veins in his neck popping up.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

12. Lehrer got slapped around by Mittens in that first horrible debate. He's fucking useless. nt

[Bradical79]

13. Part of moderating is keeping the candidates on topic

That's what I'm more worried about, Trump not even lying and just ignoring the questions outright.